Swinburne has the views that I find the most persuasive of any theist. He thinks that God is not necessary, doesn’t think the Ontological argument works, and adopts a generally Bayesian approach. Given that he is, in my view, the best the theists had to offer, I thought it would be worth responding to his book. Thus I shall do this.
I’ll skip the first 4 chapters, because I largely agree with them, they’re mostly methodological bayesian clarifications.
Chapter 5
Swinburne defines theism as the view that “There exists now, and always has existed and will exist, God, a spirit, that is, a non-embodied person who is omnipresent.” He elaborates that God is also omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Swinburne goes on to claim that the prior in God is high, claiming
I propose to argue that it is a very simple hypothesis indeed. I shall begin to do this by showing how the divine properties that I have outlined fit together. A theistic explanation is a personal explanation. It explains phenomena in terms of the action of a person. Personal explanation explains phenomena as the results of the action of a person brought about in virtue of his basic powers, beliefs, and intentions. Theism postulates God as a person with intentions, beliefs, and basic powers, but ones of a very simple kind, so simple that it postulates the simplest kind of person that there could be.
A personal explanation is not a very simple one. This is because persons are complicated things, with a variety of goals, desires, and complex mental phenomena. One indicator of how complex something is relates to how easy it is to model mathematically. Modeling mathematically the Schroedinger equations is much easier than modeling an entire person, with all of their desires.
To see why this is the case, consider a question Yudkowsky has asked, namely, why isn’t the hypothesis a witch did it always simpler? The reason is because a witch is actually very complicated. Yudkowsky elaborates on how to measure complexity—and it fares rather poorly for personal explanations. This is because modeling a personal explanation requires far more information than an impersonal one.
To start with, theism postulates a God who is just one person,5 not many. To postulate one substance is to make a very simple postulation. He is infinitely powerful, omnipotent. This is a simpler hypothesis than the hypothesis that there is a God who has suchand-such limited power (for example, the power to rearrange matter, but not the power to create it). It is simpler in just the same way that the hypothesis that some particle has zero mass, or infinite velocity is simpler than the hypothesis that it has a mass of 0.34127 of some unit, or a velocity of 301,000 km/sec. A finite limitation cries out for an explanation of why there is just that particular limit, in a way that limitlessness does not.
Postulating one God may be simpler than postulating any specific number of God’s. However, it’s not at all clear that one God is more probable than any combination of more than one Gods. The odds of there being any number of Gods greater than 1 seems higher than the odds that there is only one God.
The argument from limits is just a non starter for reasons I lay out here. Postulating that the Sun has infinite heat is not more probable than some non infinite heat. Additionally, there’s a reference class problem for what is unlimited. The first thing can create matter, so maybe it’s unlimited in that regard, but we have no reason to think it’s unreasonable in all regards. Indeed, as I argue, a fully unlimited being is incoherent.
God’s beliefs have a similar infinite quality. Human persons have some few finite beliefs, some true, some false, some justified, some not. In so far as they are true and justified (or at any rate justified in a certain way), beliefs amount to knowledge. It would seem most consonant with his omnipotence that an omnipotent being have beliefs that amount to knowledge. For, without true beliefs about the consequences of your actions, you may fail to realize your intentions. True beliefs fail to amount to knowledge only if they are true by accident. But, if the divine properties are possessed necessarily, God’s beliefs could not be false, and so could not be true by accident. And, if an omnipotent being has knowledge, the simplest such supposition is to postulate that the omnipotent being is limited in his knowledge, as in his power, only by logic. In that case he would have all the knowledge that it is logically possible that a person have—that is, he would be omniscient.
This is just a way of getting from omnipotence to omniscience, but I don’t buy omnipotence in the first place. However, the path to omniscience is not straightforward. While lacking knowledge may foil aims, having knowledge might as well. I am, for example, very happy that I don’t know exactly what it was like to be brutally tortured to death, or to engage in sex acts I find grotesque. It seems God wouldn’t want the knowledge of what it was like subjectively for a child molestor to molest children.
For a person to act, he has to have intentions. A person could be omnipotent in the sense that whatever (logically possible) action he formed the intention to do, he would succeed in doing, and also omniscient so that he knew what were all the (logically possible) actions available to an omnipotent being in his situation, and yet be predetermined to form certain intentions. His intentions might be determined by causal factors outside his control, or at any rate, as are those of humans, greatly influenced by them. But, if a person is predetermined (or has an inbuilt probabilistic tendency) to act in certain specific ways, this means that a tendency to act in a particular way is built into him. But a person with an inbuilt detailed specification of how to act is a much more complex person than one whose actions are determined only by his uncaused choice at the moment of choice. Such a being I call a perfectly free being. Theism in postulating that God is perfectly free makes the simplest supposition about his choice of intentions.
This is not true at all. For one, I don’t even think that the notion of a being whose actions are determined neither by chance nor necessity is coherent. What is the third option?
Second, even if possible, why is it simple. If his will is determined by nothing predictable, then that means that every thoughts and aim he ever has is unexplained—making the theory much less simple.
Swinburne next argues for reasons internalism as a way to get to omnibenevolence. I agree with his move here.
The hypothesis of theism postulates not merely the simplest starting point of a personal explanation there could be (simpler than many gods or weak gods), but the simplest starting point of explanation for the existence of the universe with all the characteristics that I shall be analysing. We shall see this in detail in subsequent chapters, but the basic point is this. A scientific explanation, will have to postulate as a starting point of explanation a substance or substances that caused or still cause the universe and its characteristics. To postulate many or extended such substances (an always existing universe; or an extended volume of matter-energy from which, uncaused by God, all began) is to postulate more entities than theism. The simplest scientific starting point would be an unextended point. This, however, would have to have some finite amount or other of power or liability to exercise it (since what it will create would not be constrained by rational considerations), and so it would not possess the simplicity of infinity
But theism also has to postulate God exists and also has powers. It runs into the same problems. Thus, theism is not a good explanation. It has only superficial simplicity.
Furthermore, if some actual or postulated entity other than God is to provide a complete (or ultimate) explanation of phenomena, it needs to have added to it (in the case of a person) specific powers, beliefs, and intentions, or (in the case of an inanimate substance) specific powers and liabilities to exercise them. We need both the ‘what’ that causes, and the ‘why’ it causes. The advantage of theism is that the mere existence of God provides most of that extra ‘why’. The powers and beliefs of a God are part of his simple nature. And his perfect goodness constrains the intentions that he will form—he will, as we have seen, always do the best or equal best action or kind of action in so far as there are such, and no bad action. God chooses to bring about what he does in virtue of seeing the goodness of things; and, in so far as that still gives him an enormous choice of what to bring about, he chooses by a ‘mental toss up’. Thus for the theist, explanation stops at what, intuitively, is the most natural kind of stopping place for explanation—the choice of an agent. We ourselves make choices, and it seems to us as we do so that we are the source of one state of affairs coming about rather than another. Of course there may be some explanation of why we make the choices that we do. But we understand what is happening without having to make that supposition. Hence we have a familiar concept of an agent’s bringing 106 The Intrinsic Probability of Theism about through his choice the diversity of things, which it is natural to use in this context. It follows that the very existence of God entails most of the other elements involved in a full personal explanation of phenomena, requiring only the addition of his intention at the time (the limits to his possible intentions being set by his existence as a necessarily perfectly good being). Such a full explanation will also, we have seen, be an ultimate explanation. In the case of any actual or postulated inanimate substance, there is no reason to expect it to have the liability to exercise any powers it might have in this way or that way. That is, there is no reason to expect an always existing universe or a universe-creating entity to be of any one kind rather than any other, create a universe of any one kind rather than any other. By contrast, God’s goodness (which follows from his other properties) will lead us to expect to find a universe of one kind rather than another. And if, as I shall be arguing, the actual universe is of a kind we would expect to find, then theism will have considerable explanatory power. To postulate a rival hypothesis that has the same explanatory power, we would have to complicate the bare hypotheses that I have been discussing (an always existing universe, or an unextended point from which all began) by supposing that they had the requisite extra properties (always being of a certain kind, or creating a universe of a certain kind) for no very good reason—that’s just how it is. So, even if some rival actual or postulated substance was as such as simple as theism, it would have to be made a lot more complicated in order to have as much explanatory power as theism.
But theism also has to postulate this. Additionally, it could be that there’s some simpler parsimonious explanations based on strings or something similar that explain both reality and the powers of things to affect other things. Or perhaps the laws of physics lead to the emergence of physical things.
Chapter 6
Our understanding of what is good and bad is very limited. Some actions may be good or bad because of intrinsic qualities that they possess to which we as morally imperfect beings are totally insensitive. Some actions may be good or bad because of consequences that they have but of which we, as beings of very limited knowledge and intelligence, have not the slightest notion. Yet clearly most of us have some understanding of moral values. When we judge that it is good for us to feed the starving and help the weak, wrong to tell lies and break promises (all of this at any rate under normal circumstances), we make true moral judgements. And we are able to judge to some extent whether these actions would be good or wrong for us to do, as the case may be, if we were beings of different kinds—if we were very powerful or had created the people who are now starving. We reach judgements of general moral principle by reflecting on particular cases, and considering the grounds on which we judge that this action was bad and that one supererogatory. And then we can see whether the goodness (or whatever) of the action depends on certain features of the circumstances of the agent and time of his action, or whether the action would be good for any agent to do at any time. We can see, for example, that, although it might be good for me and perhaps also for you to punish a child of mine for breaking your window, it would not be good for a mere stranger to take upon The Explanatory Power of Theism 113 himself that task. We can see too that my obligation to keep a promise I have made to you would be entirely unaffected by how powerful I was; the obligation would remain even if I was omnipotent. Even on individual such matters we could be mistaken. Our understanding of most other things discussed in this book, and in most books about most things, is very limited and prone to error, but is such that we can grow in it. We have to make tentative judgements in the light of our understanding at the time of our investigation—in this matter as in all matters—bearing in mind the possibility of future revision. But it is wildly implausible to suppose that our understanding of what is morally good and bad is totally in error. And, if it was, I cannot see that we would have a concept of moral goodness at all.1 So, given some idea of moral goodness, we have some idea of the kinds of world that God, if there is a God, would be likely to bring about. If there is in some situation a unique best action, he will do it. God will therefore, I suggest, always keep his promises and tell the truth. But I suggest that it is not generally the case that there is before God a unique best action, or a set of incompatible equal best actions. If there could be a unique best of all the possible worlds that (it is logically possible) God could create, it would be a unique best act to create it. But, contrary to Leibniz,2 there could not be such a world.3 For suppose that there is such a world, W. W will presumably contain a finite or infinite number of conscious beings. Would a world be a worse world if, instead of one of these conscious beings, it contained another with the same properties—if, instead of Swinburne, it contained a counterpart of Swinburne who wrote an exactly similar book and in other ways had exactly similar properties and did exactly similar actions? Surely not. But then there will be no unique best of all possible worlds that God could create. If there could be a best of all possible worlds that God could create, that is, a world such that no world is better than it (although other worlds may be equally good), then it would be an equal best act to create such a world. But it seems almost equally implausible to suppose that there could be such a world. For again take any world W. Presumably the goodness of such a world, as I shall argue in more detail later, will consist in part in it containing a finite or infinite number of conscious beings who will enjoy it. But, if the enjoyment of the world by each is a valuable thing, surely a world with a few more conscious beings in it would be a yet more valuable world—for there would be no reason why the existence of the latter should detract from the enjoyment of the world by others—they could always be put some considerable distance away from others, so that there was no mutual interference. I conclude that it is not, for conceptual reasons, plausible to suppose that there could be a best or equal best of all possible worlds that God could create, and in consequence God could not in creating a world be doing a best or equal best action.4 But it is highly implausible to suppose that merely for that reason a God would not have created anything at all. We can also conclude that God will not do any action that is overall bad. If he brings about suffering, or permits other agents to do so, it must be that bringing about or permitting that suffering serves a greater good that could not be achieved without it, and God must have the right to impose that suffering on the sufferer. I shall be arguing in Chapter 11 that suffering does sometimes in this way serve a greater good, and that God does have limited rights to impose or permit suffering. But I shall also claim that he does not have the right to impose or permit unlimited suffering (for example, endless suffering) on anyone contrary to his or her choice.
If our understanding of good or bad isn’t totally in error then that takes out much of the skeptical theist route. If we can know anything about morality, one thing we know is that it’s bad when babies starve to death. If we can predict that God would bring about good world features, it seems we can also predict he wouldn’t bring about bad world features.
God must bring about something. Can he bring about other divine beings? I discuss this issue in Additional Note 1. In that case the inevitability of God bringing about something could be satisfied, on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, by a first divine being (‘The Father’) bringing about ‘from all eternity’—which I understand as ‘at each moment of everlasting time’—the Son and the Spirit. In that case there would be no need for Aquinas to reject the Dionysian principle. The need for continuing creation could also be satisfied by the divine beings continously keeping each other in 118 The Explanatory Power of Theism
But God can bring about us with extra abilities—making us better off. This seems to be a version of the no best world objection, which I’ve addressed here.
Agents who have moral awareness with limited power and freedom, will in virtue of their limited freedom be subject to nonrational influences, temptations to do other than the good. Hence they will have significant free choice in the sense of a free choice that can make real differences to things for good or ill. The goodness of significant free choice is, I hope, evident.
Theism is a bad explanation of many of the non rational influences. Why would GOd make us subject to particular biases and other features that make us less rational. Even if we must be limited (which I don’t accept), theism can’t explain specific facts about non rational influences that make the world worse.
I also don’t accept that free choice is valuable intrinsically. When one’s on a roller coaster they don’t have much free choice, but it’s still good. Free choice is good if and only if it brings about desirable mental states—ones which God can cause because he is omnipotent without free choice.
God has reason also to create animals, beings simpler than humanly free agents, ones that spontaneously do good without having the free will to choose between good and evil; conscious beings who want (that is, have desires) to have various sensations and do various actions; and so get pleasure or enjoyment from having their wants satisfied. It would be good that they should learn what is to their benefit or harm, and use their knowledge and capacities spontaneously (not through free choice) to care for themselves and to prolong their life; and to care for each other and especially their young. No doubt snakes and fish get pleasurable sensations from 120 The Explanatory Power of Theism food and sex. And birds and rabbits rejoice in controlling their bodies to fly and run. They learn where food is to be had, and danger avoided, and through effort often get the food and avoid the danger. As we move up the evolutionary scale, we find animals whose actions are less a matter of instinct, and more a matter of learning and so of knowledge
This is a pretty common theme, but this seems to be the fallacy of understated evidence. Maybe God has a reason to create animals. But God certainly doesn’t have a reason to cause animals to mostly die at a very young age—almost certainly enduring more suffering than pleasure in their lives. Theism can’t explain why God doesn’t make animals much better off. Additionally, animals often act terribly immorally, committing teleological evils.
And finally, of course, God has reason to create a beautiful inanimate world—that is, a beautiful physical universe. Whatever God creates will be a good product; and so any physical universe that he creates will be beautiful, as are humans and animals. Consider the stars and planets moving in orderly ways, and plants growing from seed into colourful flowers and reproducing themselves. Even if no one apart from God himself sees such a world, it is good that it exists.
I have a few objections here.
This is the fallacy of understated evidence. Why does God make very ugly parts of nature and not make nature more beautiful?
A beautiful world isn’t good apart from being observed. If it were then the sum total goodness of an unobserved universe could surpass the goodness of all human well-being. If a beautiful unobserved galaxy is a little bit good, then infinite unobserved galaxies would be infinitely good.
I don’t think beauty is objective.
Theism can’t explain adequately why many people don’t find nature beautiful.
Humanly Free Agents Need Bodies I defined ‘humanly free agents’ as animate beings with moral awareness and limited freedom, power, and knowledge. They are persons of a limited kind. I claimed also that God would be unlikely to instantiate the kind of goodness that they possess in a minimum degree. If he makes humanly free agents, he will give them a significant amount of freedom, power, and knowledge. If their limited freedom is to be greatly valuable, it will be a freedom to choose between good and evil in the exercise of power to make deeply significant differences to themselves, each other, and the physical world by their choices (including the power to increase their powers and freedom of choice). They need to be able to cause in themselves and others pleasant and unpleasant sensations; investigate the world and acquire knowledge, and tell others about it.
This is once again the fallacy of understated evidence. Why wouldn’t God give us
Greater bodily control, making us suffer less. For example, why can’t we fly and why do we all di, often in painful ways.
Why make humans have limited cognitive abilities—making it very difficult to gain particular types of knowledge. This is especially true for severely mentally disabled people.
Why make unpleasant sensations that are horrific and non voluntary, like the pain of burning to death.
Why make it so difficult to communicate to others. For example, we could imagine a world in which people could telepathically communicate—giving others a total picture of their knowledge. This would be better and make humans better able to understand the world. For example, the world would be better if I could communicate the innefable sentiment that leads me to favor utilitarianism.
Why make there be moral patients who suffer, who are not moral agents? For example, animals and severely mentally disabled people plausibly can’t learn much or understand the world enough to make difficult choices, so why must they suffer?
Why create things like addiction which actively thwart people’s acting freely on their will?
It’s also not clear why the ability to choose to do evil is very important. I don’t have the freedom to destroy the world, yet that is no restriction on my freedom, and it doesn’t harm me.
They must be able through choice to influence the powers of themselves and others to acquire these beliefs and cause sensations, and to influence what they find pleasant or unpleasant; and to influence the ways (for good and evil ) in which they are naturally inclined to use their powers. They must be able to help each other to grow in knowledge, factual and moral; in their power to influence things; and in the desire to use their powers and knowledge for good. And they must also, in order to have significant responsibility, be able either through negligence or through deliberate choice to restrict their own and each other’s knowledge, powers, and desire for good. So these creatures must start life with (or acquire by natural processes) limited unchosen power and knowledge and desires for good and bad, and the choice of whether to extend that power and knowledge and improve those desires, or not to bother. And, if that choice is to be a serious one, it must involve some difficulty—time, effort, and no guarantee of success must be involved in the search for new knowledge and power, and improved desires. So creatures need to have at their disposal an initial range of basic actions. We may call the kinds of effects that a creature can (at some time) intentionally bring about by her basic actions her region of basic control. Creatures need an initial region of basic control. And, knowledge being a great good and necessary for control, creatures need also an initial range within which they can acquire largely true beliefs about what is the case. Let us call the kinds of such beliefs that a creature can acquire his region of basic perception. The region of basic control will have to lie within the region of basic perception. For creatures cannot bring about effects intentionally unless they know which effects they are bringing about. For us humans, certain states of our bodies are our region of basic control, and our region of basic perception consists of the observable states of things in a wide region encompassing our bodies
This can’t explain lots of things
Why don’t we have more or total control over our physical sensations. It’s strange that, for example, many people need to take medication to prevent them from having the sensation of abject misery all of the time.
Why can’t we help each other grow more in power and knowledge?
I don’t see how Swinburne gets from the premise that we need to be able to help people that we need to start as infants who know nothing.
This also can’t explain why there is irresolvable disagreement about morality and other things.
This can’t explain the numerous limits on states of affairs we can bring about.
This also can’t explain why most sentient beings die in infancy. If one claimed that the purpose of being a citizen was to be elected governor, then the fact that most citizens aren’t governors would be very relevant.
Further, if creatures are not merely to find themselves with beliefs about each other’s beliefs and purposes (which they will need to do if they are to be able to influence them), but to be able to choose to learn about each other’s beliefs and purposes and to communicate with them in the public way needed for cooperative action and cooperative rational discussion (which will involve language), they need to manifest their beliefs and purposes in a public way—that is, through their regions of basic control, which must therefore be physical regions. These regions need to behave in such a way that the simplest explanation of that behaviour is in terms of the beliefs and purposes (that is intentions) of creatures whose regions they are. In consequence, for example, we must be able to attribute to each other (on grounds of being the simplest explanation of the behaviour of others) beliefs sensitive to input—for example, to attribute to someone a belief that some object is present when light comes from some object on to their eyes; and purposes that—although not fully determined by brain states—do show some constancy
There are many possible ways communication could be made easier, e.g. telepathic communication. Additionally, this can’t explain numerous limits on people’s ability to communicate, including deafness, muteness, and all other things that hinder people’s ability to speak. This also can’t explain non choosen dispositions that people start with. For example, I didn’t choose to have utilitarian intuitions—I just have them.
It would be good that creatures should have the power not merely to extend their regions of control and perception beyond the basic, but that they should have the power to extend or restrict (or prevent being restricted by others or by natural processes) the regions of basic perception and control (including the ability to move) of themselves and others, and to extend or restrict the range of pleasant or unpleasant sensations and the desires to do this or that which they have. There need to be basic actions that creatures can do, or non-basic actions that they can learn to do, that under various circumstances will make differences to their capacities for basic action and perception, and to their sensations and desires. That involves there being natural processes that they can discover and so affect, that enable them to perform their basic actions and acquire and retain in memory basic perceptions, and diminish or increase pain or pleasure. And, if these processes are to be manipulable not merely by the human whose they are, but by other humans as well, they must be public processes. For this latter to be possible there needs to be a public place at which we or others can act to interfere with and so improve or damage the quality of our sensations and desires, and the extent of our capacity for basic actions and perceptions. We need not merely a region of basic control and a region of basic perception, but what I shall call a machine room. This is a public place where our intentions are translated into basic actions, and incoming stimuli are translated into sensations and beliefs, and processes give rise to desires and thoughts. When there is such a physical object, we and others can damage or improve these processes. In all these ways we need a controllable public region where we are. And so the existence of humanly free agents with significant freedom requires the existence of a physical universe
Why? God can’t limit his power, why is it good for us to be able to limit ours? This also can’t explain why humans naturally deteriorate even when we don’t desire to, merely as we age. It’s also not clear why we can’t be causally efficacious disembodied spirits.
In one or other of these ways, if they are to have the great good of being able to affect themselves and each other greatly for good or ill, finite creatures need bodies. Angels traditionally are finite creatures, but we cannot blind them or embrace them, because there is no place at which to direct our activity; we cannot capture them in order to affect them.
Disembodied spirits could be limited, especially if they’re causally efficacious. Pointing to facts about angels is not a logical limit on what God could do.
Mere telepathic communication with individual spirits does not allow for public discussion with many humans and spirits.
Why not have both telepathic communication and public communication. Also, what’s impossible about public telepathic communication, which anyone can pick up on, if they desire.
Since humanly free agents have desires and moral awareness, they will be capable of love and gratitude; and, since they are capable of significant growth in knowledge, they will be able to develop the metaphysical concepts that allow them to have the concept of God and so to love him if they come to believe that he exists.
This can’t explain many related things.
Lots of people don’t believe in God—there are non resistant non believers.
Many people say that even if they believed in God they couldn’t worship him because of atrocious things he did.
Why do so many humans lack moral awareness—and why is our moral awareness so flawed. Throughout most of human history, people’s moral awareness has lead them to conclude that slavery is fine.
Why do humans have bad desires that we don’t choose. For example, why are lots of humans sexually attracted to children?
Chapter 7
In this chapter, Swinburne presents and defends cosmological arguments.
From time to time various writers2 have told us that we cannot reach any conclusions about the origin or development of the universe, since it is the only one of which we have knowledge, and rational inquiry can reach conclusions only about objects that belong to kinds, for example, it can reach a conclusion about what will happen to this bit of iron only because there are other bits of iron, the behaviour of which can be studied. This objection has the surprising, and to most of these writers unwelcome, consequence, that physical cosmology could not reach justified conclusions about such matters as the size, age, rate of expansion, and density of the universe as a whole (because it is the only one of which we have knowledge); and also that physical anthropology could not reach conclusions about the origin and development of the human race (because, as far as our knowledge goes, it is the only one of its kind). The implausibility of these consequences leads us to doubt the original objection, which is indeed totally misguided
I don’t think we can have no knowledge, but we cannot infer facts that apply to objects within the universe must apply to the universe itself. We can’t deduce the age of the true universe, just from looking at our region of the physical universe.
Uniqueness is relative to description. Every physical object is unique under some description, if you allow descriptions that locate an object by its spatial position—that is, by its distance and direction from named objects. Thus my desk is the one and only desk in such and such an apartment; and that apartment is the penultimate one on the left in a certain row. And, even if you allow only descriptions in qualitative terms—for example, the one and only existing desk of such-and-such a shape, such-and-such a weight, with such-and-such carvings on its legs, and scratches on its top situated in an apartment that is the penultimate one in a row of apartments—it is still plausible to suppose that most physical objects have a unique description.3 In the first respect, the universe is, like all physical objects, pickable out by a unique description—‘the physical object consisting of all physical objects including the Earth spatially related to each other and to no other physical object’. In the second respect, too, the universe may well be describable by a unique description—for example, ‘the physical object consisting of physical objects that are all spatially related to each other and to no other physical object, governed by laws of nature L beginning from initial conditions I’ (where L and I are specified in detail ). In all this the universe is no more ‘unique’ than the objects that it contains. Yet all objects within the universe are characterized by certain properties, which are common to more than one object. My desk has in common with various other objects that it is a desk; and with various different objects, that it weighs less than a ton, and so on. The same applies to the universe itself. It is, for example, like objects within it such as the solar system, a system of material bodies distributed in empty space. It is a physical object and, like other physical objects, has density and mass. The objection fails to make any crucial distinction between the universe and other objects; and so it fails in its attempt to prevent at the outset a rational inquiry into the issue of whether the universe has some origin outside itself.
There is a crucial distinction: if the universe is all there is, then it is different from things within space time. Certain properties we infer may only apply to objects within spacetime, not to spacetime itself.
Yet there’s a bigger problem, namely, we have no idea what the fundamental universe is. It’s imminently possible that the universe is some string, law of nature, or something beyond our comprehension. We can’t infer very much about it given how little we know about it.
My assessment of the present state of science is that that is what it does tend to show. It suggests the simplest explanation of the current mutual recession of the galaxies (the groups of stars that get further and further apart from each other) is that this is a consequence of fundamental laws operating on matter-energy produced by an enormous explosion, the Big Bang, fifteen billion years ago. As we go backwards in time, matter was more and more dense. But if, as it appears, it would have been a physically impossible state for matter to be packed into a point with infinite density, the matter must have come into existence and the Bang caused its recession when it was packed very densely but not infinitely densely. However, new scientific data or further reflection on existing data might lead scientists to conclude that the best (that is, the simplest) explanation of the laws that operate in today’s relatively spaced-out universe is in terms of a more fundamental law that has the consequence that quite different less fundamental laws would have operated in an earlier and denser universe. Extrapolating backwards in accordance with these laws might lead to the conclusion that any Big Bang would have occurred in a very dense state produced by a previous contraction of the universe. But we can have no evidence of the operation of quite different laws in the past, unless their operation is a consequence of the simplest explanation of what is happening in the present. In so far as science shows that the fundamental laws11 of nature operating today are L, and that extrapolating L backwards leads to a physically impossible state, we have to conclude that there was a beginning to the universe-governed-by-today’s-laws and that we can have no knowledge of anything earlier than that. There might have been a physical universe governed by quite different laws, or there might have been no universe at all. But it is always simpler to postulate nothing rather than something; and so, in the absence of observable data made probable by the hypothesis that quite different non-fundamental laws were operating in the past, the hypothesis that the universe came into existence a finite time ago will remain the more probable hypothesis. But it is certainly possible that science might come to show that the fundamental laws governing our universe are such that we can extrapolate backwards for ever from the present state of the universe. Then evidence would support the claim that the universe is infinitely old. If we confine ourselves to scientific explanation, it will now follow that the existence of the universe (for as long as it has existed, whether a finite or an infinite time) has no explanation.
This seems very premature. I don’t think that science points to a universe of finite age—the big bang is just as far back as our models go, not the beginning of everything. We have no idea what, if anything, caused the big bang. There’s a similar question of what caused God? Now the answer will be generally that God is metaphysically necessary (something that Swinburne rejects), or that only a particular type of thing needs an explanation. However, the atheist can just suppose that the cause of the universe was one of the types of things that needs no explanation.
Like Leibniz, I conclude that the existence of the universe over finite or infinite time would be, if only scientific explanation is allowed, a brute inexplicable fact. And, as Leibniz also did, I conclude that there is the possibility of an explanation of that existence in personal terms. The existence of the (physical ) universe over time comes into my category of things too big for science to explain. If the existence of the universe is to be explained, personal explanation must be brought in, and an explanation given in terms of a person who is not part of the universe acting from without. This argument will need to be recast if it is to be put in terms of the substances-powers-and-liabilities account of scientific explanation, in which causes are objects (substances) with powers and liabilities. The principle about the cause of a collection of states then becomes: ‘a (full ) cause of the occurrence of a collection of states is any collection of (full ) causes of each, whose states as they cause are not members of the former collection’. But the S–P–L account has a different understanding from the amended Hempelian model of what are the states of objects. For the S–P–L account the ‘why’ in explanation is constituted by the powers and liabilities of substances (objects) that are properties of substances, and not by laws independent of the substances that they govern. So a full explanation of the existence of a substance will invoke a substance (either the same substance or another one) and its powers and liabilities; and a full explanation of the latter will also involve a substance, its powers, and liabilities. And the very factors that explain the existence of substances, the ‘why’ of explanation (in this model, powers and liabilities), now become explicable in the same terms as the ‘what’. It still follows, as before, that, if every state of the universe has a full cause in the universe at some earlier time causing it, then there will be no explanation within the scientific pattern of why there is a universe throughout all history, only of why it exists at any particular moment. But the question again arises as to whether the operations of each full cause itself depends on a more fundamental cause. As before, the latter cannot be a physical cause, for there are no physical causes apart from the universe itself and parts thereof. So the issue is whether a personal cause acting from outside the universe causes the causes within the universe to cause what they do. More precisely, the issue is whether the power of the universe to continue its existence into the next moment, and its liability to exercise that power, have no explanation at the time in question, or whether their existence and operation depend on a person who keeps them in existence and operating. Is the scientific explanation not merely a full, but a complete explanation; or does it itself have an explanation in terms of a person G who chooses to use the universe itself to keep the universe in being (as well as to bring it into existence, if it had a beginning)? If so, G by his continuing intention is the ultimate cause of there being a universe over infinite time. 144 The Cosmological Argument So, either way, there is the possibility of a person G being the ultimate cause of there being a universe at all; and being the complete cause of its existence at any particular moment. The issue is in effect the same on the two models of explanation (whether we think of laws as separate from, or in a way properties of, the objects that they govern); but it will be simpler, for purposes of exposition, initially to pose the questions in terms of the amended Hempelian model; and then revert subsequently to the S–P–L model.
Swinburne and I both agree that there is probably something with no deeper explanation. I don’t see a good reason to think that it is God.
The Argument to God For the reasons given in Chapter 3, the simplest explanation is, other things being equal, the most probable. Hence it is more probable, if there is such a G, that there is the simplest kind of G; and that—for the reasons discussed in Chapter 5—is a G of infinite power, knowledge, and freedom—that is, God. To postulate a G of very great but finite power, much but not all knowledge, etc., would raise the inevitable questions of why he has just that amount of power and knowledge, and what stops him from having more, questions that do not arise with the postulation of God. And even less simple, and so less probable, is polytheism, the supposition that the universe was created and is conserved by a committee of gods of limited power.
I disagree with these arguments for reasons discussed previously.
Swinburne next rejects the PSR, for reasons I agree with.
Chapter 8 Teleological Arguments
The orderliness of the universe to which I draw attention here is its conformity to formulae, to simple, formulable, scientific laws. The orderliness of the universe in this respect is a very striking fact about it. The universe might so naturally have been chaotic, but it is not—it is very orderly. And then there is the spatial order of the intricate arrangement of parts in human (and animal ) bodies. We have limbs, liver, heart, kidneys, stomach, sense organs, etc. of such a kind that, given the regularities of temporal order, our bodies are suitable vehicles to provide us with an enormous amount of knowledge of the world and to execute an enormous variety of purposes in it (as described more fully in Chapter 6). This is similar to the way in which parts of machines are arranged so as to produce an overall result from the operation of the machine; though—so far—machines intentionally constructed by humans are far less intricate than human bodies.
Natural laws are more simple than total chaos, because chaos leaves lots of things unexplained. Additionally, theism gives no good explanation of natural laws causing lots of suffering and confusingly relying on differential equations. Evolution explains biological complexity—and it’s probable in a big universe with predictable laws like ours. A universe with predictable laws can be explained by them being brute or by a big multiverse.
The fifth way is based on the guidedness of nature. Some things lacking awareness seek a goal—which is apparent from the fact that always or most usually they behave in the same way which leads to the best result. From this it is evident that it is not by chance but by intention that they reach their goal. Nothing, however, that lacks awareness tends to a goal, except under the direction of someone with awareness and with understanding; the arrow, for example, requires an archer. Everything in nature, therefore is directed to its goal by someone with understanding and this we call ‘God’.2 Aquinas argues that the regular behaviour of each inanimate thing shows that some animate being is directing it (making it move, so as to achieve some purpose, attain some goal ); and from that he comes—rather quickly—to the conclusion that one ‘being with understanding’ is responsible for the regular behaviour of all inanimate things (apart, maybe, from the behaviour for which humans and animals are responsible).
I don’t know what it means for nature to be goal directed. It follows predictable laws, but that’s more probable, for reasons already explained.
So how probable is it intrinsically that in a Godless universe there will be laws of nature at some level guaranteeing that things behave in very largely predictable ways? The answer to this question depends to some extent on what laws of nature are. I discussed in Chapter 2 three theories of this. There is first the immensely implausible Humean account developed by Lewis—that the conformity of all objects to laws of nature is just the fact that they do so conform; there is no more fundamental explanation of this conformity. It is just a brute fact that (both at a fundamental level and at a phenomenal level ) objects (substances) fall into kinds (electrons, positrons, pendula, seeds) in such a way that the simplest extrapolation from their past behaviour leads to generalizations that predict their future behaviour more or less correctly. In the near past, as in the more remote past, every positron has continued to attract every electron with exactly the same force inversely proportional to the square of their distances apart. There are innumerable other ways in which objects could have behaved, almost all of them such that the simplest extrapolation from their past behaviour would not have correctly predicted their subsequent behaviour. It is only if there is a common explanatory cause of the behaviour of objects that there is any reason to suppose that they will behave in the same way. And in a Godless universe on the Humean theory of laws of nature there is no more fundamental explanation of the coincidence in the ways in which objects behave. On this view ‘laws’ do not really explain the behaviour of objects, they merely describe it. Alternative accounts of laws of nature represent talk of ‘laws’ as talk about a feature of the world additional to the mere succession of events, a feature of physical necessity that is part of the world. As we saw in Chapter 2, this feature of physical necessity may be thought of 160 Teleological Arguments either as separate from the objects (substances) that are governed by it, or as a constitutive aspect of those objects. The former approach leads to a picture of the world as consisting of events (constituted perhaps by substances with their properties), on the one hand, and laws of nature, on the other hand; the most common version of this view claims that laws of nature are logically contingent relations between universals. The conformity of all objects to simple laws of nature consists on this account of the instantiation of quite a few universals each connected in simple ways to one or two other universals. If, despite the difficulties raised in Chapter 2, we adopt this account, the first question is why should there be universals connected to each other before they are instantiated, and why—if there is a universe, and so some universals must be instantiated—should quite a few universals be instantiated in such a way as to form a whole system of laws of nature. There might be many universals that were instantiated without bringing any other universals with them, so that there was no predictable effect of the instantiation. But on this account virtually all universals are connected to other universals. And there might be universals, but only ones of kinds instantiated once or twice in the history of the universe, rather than ones like ‘photon’ or ‘copper’ that are instantiated often and so can be used for useful prediction. And, again, the mathematical connections between the universals—for example, between the masses of bodies, their distance apart, and the gravitational attraction between them— might be of such complexity as never to be inferable from the past behaviour of objects. Now I suggest that a universe without connections between universals would be simpler than one with connections; and one with simpler patterns of connection would be simpler than one with such complicated patterns of connection that rational beings would not be able to infer the future behaviour of objects by means of the simplest extrapolation from their past behaviour. Among theories of the universe as a whole (which will thus have equal scope), simplicity is the sole indicator of intrinsic probability. It then follows that, if we give it the weight that I have urged that we should (so that a very simple theory is more probable than a disjunction of many more complex theories), it would be very probable that there would be no connections between universals at all—that the universe would be chaotic. But note that, if we give simplicity much less weight and suppose that a simpler theory is merely somewhat more probable Teleological Arguments 161 than a more complex theory, it might be that it is more probable that one of a disjunction of alternative sets of fairly simple connections between universals holds rather than no connections at all. But in that case, since there are a very large number of complex ways in which universals could be associated, and we are giving simplicity only a moderate weight, then it will be at least as probable that one of the complex connections between universals will hold as that one of the simple connections will hold—there being so many more (infinitely many more) of the former. Either way, it is going to be improbable that in a Godless universe there will be simple connections between universals, and so simple laws of nature.
Anthropics combined with a multiverse explain this—absent there being things that interact, we wouldn’t exist or be around to complain about this. Additionally, there might be some underlying fundamental explanation of both physical things and their interactions. We just don’t know enough to hold views. However, God is still less simple because he is both a being with a will AND has the ability to affect the world. Those not both existing seems more probable than them both existing.
I have been assuming so far that there is only one universe. But there may be many universes. If there were actually existing all possible universes, some of them will be law governed and it might be expected that we would find ourselves in such a universe. However, it would be the height of irrationality to postulate innumerable universes just to explain the particular features of our universe, when we can do so by postulating just one additional entity—God.
This is a confusion. Multiverse theories start from simple mathematical laws, and deduce complex multiverses from those. This is simple, because simplicity is about the starting assumptions. Also, God can do infinite things, so by this standard God isn’t simple.
Swinburne next argues that abiogenesis is implausible absent God. However, God is a prime example of abiogenesis—life coming from nothing. Furthermore, if there’s a multiverse or a very large universe, abiogenesis is inevitable eventually.
Swinburne next presents the fine tuning argument, which I’ve addressed here. He then presents the argument from beauty, which I’ve already addressed in this article.
In Part 2 of this series we’ll discuss chapter 9. Stay (finely) tuned.
Chapter 9 Arguments from Consciousness and Morality
Swinburne writes
A human would not exist unless it had a capacity for a mental life (a capacity to have sensations, thoughts, etc.); and having such a capacity is itself a mental property (one to the instantiation of which in a subject he has privileged access). Hence humans are mental substances. But there is more to humans than just having essentially a capacity for a mental life, connected to a body. That mental life itself, I now argue, is a state of the mental substance that is the embodied human being in virtue of being a state of a pure mental substance, the soul of the human, which is connected to his body. For what makes me me is the continuity of my mental life, not the continuity of a body to which it is connected. Even if normally the latter continuity is physically necessary for the former, there are two different continuities. And by the continuity of my mental life, I mean simply that the mental events are had by me, a notion which is not further analyzable; but whose non-physical nature we can bring out by giving the name of my ‘soul’ to the essential part of me which has the mental events (and which is connected to the nonessential part, my body). We can begin to see that this account of personal identity is correct by pointing out that if you knew all the 196 Arguments from Consciousness and Morality properties, physical and mental associated with bodies, you would still not know one of the most important things of all—whether you or any other human continued over time to live a conscious life. Let me illustrate this with the example of brain transplants. The brain consists of two hemispheres and a brainstem. There is good evidence that humans can survive and behave as conscious beings if much of one hemisphere is destroyed. Now imagine my brain (hemispheres plus brainstem) divided into two, and each half-brain taken out of my skull and transplanted into the empty skull of a body from which a brain has just been removed; and there to be added to each half-brain from some other brain (for example, the brain of my identical twin) whatever other parts (for example, more brainstem) are necessary in order for the transplant to take and for there to be two living persons with lives of conscious experiences. Now I am very well aware that an operation of this delicacy is not at present practically possible and perhaps never will be possible for mere human scientists with mere human resources; but I cannot see that there are any insuperable theoretical difficulties standing in the way of such an operation. (Indeed that is a mild understatement—I fully expect it to be done one day.) We are, therefore, entitled to ask the further question—if this operation were done and we then had two living persons, both with lives of conscious experiences, which would be me? Probably both would to some extent behave like me and claim to be me and to remember having done what I did; for behaviour and speech depend, in large part, on brain states, and there are very considerable overlaps between the ‘information’ carried by the two hemispheres that gives rise to behaviour and speech. But both persons would not be me. For, if they were both identical with me, they would be the same person as each other (if a is the same as b, and b is the same as c, then a is the same as c) and they are not. They now have different experiences and lead different lives. There remain three other possibilities: that the person with my right half-brain is me, or that the person with my left half-brain is me, or that neither is me. But we cannot be certain which holds. It follows that mere knowledge of what happens to brains or bodies or anything else physical does not tell you what happens to persons. It is tempting to say that it is a matter of arbitrary definition which of the three possibilities is correct. But this temptation must be Arguments from Consciousness and Morality 197 resisted. There is a crucial factual issue here—which can be shown if we imagine that I have been captured by a mad surgeon who is about to perform the split-brain operation on me. He tells me (and I have every reason to believe him) that the person to be formed from my left half-brain is to have an enjoyable life and the person to be formed from my right half-brain is to be subjected to a life of torture. Whether my future life will be happy or painful, or whether I shall survive an operation at all, are clearly factual questions. (Only someone under the grip of some very strong philosophical dogma would deny that.) Yet, as I await the transplant and know exactly what will happen to my brain, I am in no position to know the answer to the question—what will happen to me. Maybe neither future person will be me—it may be that cutting the brainstem will destroy the original person once and for all, and that, although repairing the severed stem will create two new persons, neither of them will be me. Perhaps I will be the left-half-brain person, or maybe it will be the right-half-brain person who will be me. Even if one subsequent person resembles the earlier me more in character and memory claims than does the other, that one may not be me. Maybe I will survive the operation but be changed in character and have lost much of my memory as a result of it, in consequence of which the other subsequent person will resemble the earlier me more in his public behaviour than I will. Reflection on this thought experiment shows that, however much we know about what has happened to my brain—we may know exactly what has happened to every atom in it—and to every other physical part of me, we do not necessarily know what has happened to me. From that it follows that there must be more to me than the matter of which my body and brain are made, a further essential nonphysical part whose continuing in existence makes the brain (and so body) to which it is connected my brain (and body), and to this something I give the traditional name of ‘soul’
I just disagree with Swinburne here. Parfit has argued very persuasively in reasons and persons that there is no irreducible self. But also, souls solve nothing, for reasons I explain here. Either souls are causally inert or they’re not.
If they’re causally inert, then they can’t establish personal identity. If souls really just connect personal identity in a way that doesn’t causally affect the physical world, then it would be possible for me to turn into a fish instantly, yet be the same person by souls.
If they’re not, then the functional role of souls can be met by other things on naturalism.
Dualisms of the physical and mental are not popular philosophical positions today. In Chapter 2 I defended explanatory dualism (two different ways of explaining events); and in this chapter I have defended two kinds of ontological dualisms—there are both pure mental and physical events, pure mental and physical substances. I find the arguments in favour of the latter dualisms (as also the arguments in favour of the former) inescapable. You have left something all-important out of the history of the world if you tell just the story of which physical events were succeeded by which other physical events. What people did intentionally (as opposed to what merely happened to them), and how they thought and felt, are allimportant. And equally important is who had those thoughts and feelings—when did one person cease to exist and another come into being. Now certainly, as I have written, we normally know the answers to these questions. Our observation of bodies normally tells us when persons are the same and what they are feeling. Of course, if a baby Arguments from Consciousness and Morality 199 screams when prodded with a needle, it is in pain. But it is not so obvious, when a human-looking organism made in a factory or a creature from another planet is prodded with a needle and emits some sound, whether that thing is in pain. And, of course, the person with this body today who has not been subject to a brain operation and shares the same patterns of behaviour as the person with this body yesterday is the same person as the latter. But after humans, let alone creatures from some distant planet, have had massive brain operations, it is not at all clear whether we are dealing with the same person as before. What these examples bring out is that someone feeling pain is a different event from their being prodded by a needle, and this person being the same person as that person is different from this body being the same body as that; even if normally an event of the latter kind goes with an event of the former kind. A full history of the world will tell the story of feelings as well as of brain events, and of persons (and so their essential non-physical parts, souls) as well as of bodies. These arguments that show that humans have two parts—body and soul—will show that any creature that has a mental life will also have two parts. The same issues will arise for a chimpanzee or a cat as for a human. If some cat is to undergo a serious brain operation, the question arises whether the cat has reason to fear the bad experiences and look forward to the good experiences that the post-operation cat will have. That question cannot necessarily be answered merely by knowing what has happened to every molecule in the cat’s brain. So we must postulate a cat-soul that is the essential part of the cat, and whose continuation makes for the continuation of the cat. Only when we come to animals without thought or feeling does such a question not arise, and then there is no need to postulate an immaterial part of the animal. Certainly human souls have different capacities from the souls of higher animals (the former can have kinds of thought—thoughts about morality or logic—that the latter cannot have; and form kinds of purpose—for example, to solve an equation—that the latter cannot). But what my arguments show is that animals who have thought and feeling have as their essential part a non-physical soul. Just as I do not wish to deny that brain events cause mental events (that is, events in the soul, once it exists) and vice versa, so I do not necessarily wish to deny that events in the brain play a role in causing the existence of souls. Maybe, at some stage of animal evolution, an animal brain became so complex that that caused the existence of a soul connected to it, and the continued development and operation of that brain sustained the existence of the soul; and, as evolution moves on, similar complexity causes similar souls. The connection between one soul and one brain that gets established is a causal one. It is events in this particular brain that cause events in this particular soul, and events in this particular soul that cause events in this particular brain; this is what the connection between this brain and this soul amounts to.
Swinburne’s arguments for dualism seem pretty lackluster. The fact that it seems to him that there are souls isn’t great evidence for souls. Mental events being emergent doesn’t prevent them from being real. Heat emerges from very simple things, but that doesn’t mean heat isn’t real. While it may be hard to deduce from fundamental physics how we get consciousness, the same is true of quite literally all higher order physical phenomena. It’s very hard to explain a table starting at quantum mechanics.
Given the scientific laws as we believe them to be, which operated to govern the inanimate world for the first nine of the first fifteen billion years since the time of the Big Bang, there is not the slightest grounds for supposing that conscious life would evolve. The laws of Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory, integrated perhaps into a ‘Grand Unified Theory’ or ‘Theory of Everything’ by which everything physical might be explained (fully or partially, even if not completely), give not the slightest reason to suppose that some brain state would cause a green sensation or a sensed smell of coffee. But maybe there is more to the laws of nature than the relatively simple integrated system of physical laws envisaged in a vast physical theory. Maybe there are also psycho-physical laws connecting brains and their states with souls and their states, which would produce experienced effects only when brains had reached a certain stage of development. Since brain events often cause mental events, and mental events often cause brain events, scientists could perhaps establish a long list of such causal connections in humans. The list would state that brain events of a certain kind cause blue images, and brain events of a certain kind cause red images; brain events of another kind cause a strong desire to drink tea; and that a purpose to eat cake together with a belief that cake is in the cupboard cause the brain events that cause leg movements in the direction of the cupboard. And so on. Also, just possibly, scientists could list which primitive brains give rise to consciousness—that is, to souls. The reason why I wrote ‘just possibly’ is that our only grounds for believing that any other organism—whether some animal whose body was formed by normal sexual processes on earth, or some creature on another planet, or some machine made in a factory—is conscious is provided by the similarity of its behaviour and brain organization to ourselves. We do not have an independent check on whether it is conscious. And when the similarities are not strong—as between frogs, say, and human beings—it is in no way obvious whether the animal is conscious. But let us waive difficulties about how we could establish such things, and suppose that we have lists of causal connections in humans between brain events and mental events, and lists of which kinds of primitive brain give rise to consciousness—that is, souls—in which subsequent brain events cause subsequent mental events, and mental events cause brain events. These causal connections constitute very detailed generalizations, similar to descriptive generalizations of chemistry about which particular substances combine under what circumstances with which other substances to form which new substances. So does the true scientific theory of the universe consist of the hoped-for integrated theory of physics plus these trillion or so causal connections. That is immensely improbable. By the criteria set out in Chapter 3, a scientific theory (of given scope) is likely to be true in so 202 Arguments from Consciousness and Morality far as it has considerable explanatory power, and in so far as it is simple. Such an imagined psycho-physical theory would have the requisite explanatory power. (It would lead us to expect the correlations that we find—since they would be part of the theory.) But it would be so complicated that it would be immensely improbable that it provided a full explanation of mind–body interaction. For that, we need an explanation of these causal connections in terms of their derivability from a theory consisting of a few relatively simple laws that fit together (in the way in which the low-level laws of chemistry proved derivable from the atomic theory of chemistry). The theory would need to explain why the formation of a brain of a complexity as great as or greater than that of a certain animal (perhaps an early vertebrate) gives rise to consciousness—that is, to a soul with mental states. And the theory would need to explain why brain events give rise to the particular mental events they do—why a brain event of this kind causes a blue image, and one of that kind causes a red image, and not vice versa; why eating chocolate causes the brain events that cause the taste we call chocolatey rather than the taste we call pineappley? It would need to explain why this brain event causes the thought that Russia is a big country, and that one causes the thought that every human has a vocation; and why this mental event causes the brain event that causes my lips to utter this sentence, and that mental event causes the brain event that causes my lips to utter that sentence.
I’m optimistic about discovering an explanation of consciousness. We’ve discovered explanations for lots of things including disease, heat, life, fire, neural correlates of love, and many other things. We can make AI’s play near perfect chess—much better than humans. Explaining that starting at the basic laws of physics would seem near impossible. Iphones are hard to explain starting at just the laws of physics, but physics can explain Iphones. It seems like if we can explain how intelligence arises from physics, we can do the same with consciousness. Perhaps, as Searle suggests, consciousness is a biological phenomena no more mysterious than a pancreas. Once we realize how it works, the mystery will disappear.
But does not science always surprise us with new discoveries? The history of science is punctuated with many ‘reductions’ of one whole branch of science to another apparently totally different, or ‘integration’ of apparently very disparate sciences into a superscience. Thermodynamics dealing with heat was reduced to statistical mechanics dealing with velocities of large groups of particles of matter and collisions between them; the temperature of a gas proved to be the mean kinetic energy of its molecules. The separate sciences of electricity and magnetism came together to form a super-science of electromagnetism. And then optics was reduced to electromagnetism; light proved to be an electromagnetic wave. How is it that such great integrations can be achieved if my argument is correct that there could not be a simple and so probably true super-science that predicts the connections we find between mental events and brain events? There is a crucial difference between these cases. Every earlier integration into a super-science, of sciences with entities and properties apparently qualitatively very distinct, was achieved by saying that really some of these entities and properties were not as they Arguments from Consciousness and Morality 205 appeared to be. A distinction was made between the underlying (not immediately observable) physical entities and physical properties, on the one hand, and the sensory properties to which they gave rise. Thermodynamics was initially concerned with the laws of temperature exchange; and temperature was supposed to be a property inherent in an object that you felt when you touched the object. The felt hotness of a hot body is indeed qualitatively distinct from particle velocities and collisions. The reduction to statistical mechanics was achieved by distinguishing between the underlying cause of the hotness (the motion of molecules) and the sensation that the motion of molecules causes in observers, and saying that really the former was what temperature was, the latter was just the effect of temperature on observers. That done, temperature falls naturally within the scope of statistical mechanics—for molecules are particles; the entities and properties are not now of distinct kinds. Since the two sciences now dealt with entities and properties of the same (measurable) kind, reduction of one to the other became a practical prospect. But the reduction was achieved at the price of separating off the felt hotness from its causes, and only explaining the latter. All other ‘reductions’ of one science to another and ‘integrations’ of separate sciences dealing with apparently very disparate properties have been achieved by this device of denying that the apparent properties (such as the ‘secondary qualities’ of colour, heat, sound, taste) with which one science dealt belong to the physical world at all. It siphoned them off to the world of the mental. But then, when you come to face the problem of the mental events themselves, you cannot do this. If you are to explain the mental events themselves, you cannot distinguish between them and their underlying causes and only explain the latter. The enormous success of science in producing an integrated physico-chemistry has been achieved at the expense of separating off from the physical world colours, smells, and tastes, and regarding them as purely private sensory phenomena. What the evidence of the history of science shows is that the way to achieve integration of sciences is to ignore the mental. The very success of science in achieving its vast integrations in physics and chemistry is the very thing that has apparently ruled out any final success in integrating the world of the mind and the world of physics.
I don’t think that this is true at all. For example, we now know how to make AI’s play chess—something that would have once seemed to require consciousness. Heat being quick molecules involves an explanation of how the heat like property that we observe comes from simpler things—I don’t see why the same can’t happen from consciousness. Heat is not just an illusion—we’ve discovered how simple laws can result in a heat like thing. Same with life, water, neural correlates of consciousness, intelligence, and numerous others.
But even if consciousness requires positing new physics, that’s still more plausible than God. Consciousness emerging form the brain is more likely than it emerging from nothing in a disembodied mind.
However, consciousness seems to be a prime example of Swinburne committing the fallacy of understated evidence. Here are facts about consciousness that theism explains badly.
Why it’s tied to the brain. What is the reason for harm to the pink fleshy skull substance making people more violent and affecting their subjective experiences? Surely a world where lead in water didn’t decrease IQ and make people more violent would be a better world.
Why there’s so much unnecessary suffering. One could imagine a world in which psychophysical laws didn’t make us suffer as much as it does—and instead made us happy.
Why there are things like depression.
Why we don’t have better dreams. Given that dreams are forgotten about usually, it seems God would make dreams that we forget later really awesome, because bad dreams can’t serve any instrumental purpose.
Why so many undesirable things affect consciousness. For example, why people’s conscious minds get distracted despite them not desiring that.
Why people have a limited memory.
Why people can’t shut off their pain when in intense agony (for example, when being tortured).
Why we can’t solve the hard problem of consciousness. If we don’t know what beings are conscious, we risk accidentally inflicting tons of suffering.
Why people often have lots of small pains such as headaches, toe stubs, and numerous other things that plausibly serve no greater purpose.
Why animals suffer so much, experiencing almost certainly more suffering than joy.
Why desirable conscious experience doesn’t only correlate with good things. For example, why does God make lots of people get pleasure from molesting children, yet gain no pleasure from helping others?
Why do people lack moral knowledge in their consciousness. It seems we could have direct awareness of what is right.
I could keep going, but I think you get the point. When we consider consciousness in full, it’s evidence for atheism, because it has features that theism can’t explain.
So then, because we have every reason to believe that there can be no scientific theory and so scientific laws correlating brain states with souls and their states, we have every reason to believe that the causal connections that exist between them do not have a scientific explanation in terms of the properties of brain states; they are additional causal connections independent of the set of scientific laws governing the physical world. Nothing about the physical world makes it in the very least probable that there would be these connections.
We can just posit extra psychophysical laws. For example, we can just posit that a law of physics makes consciousness arise whenever there’s a particular assemblage of brain activity.
I cannot see any force in an argument to the existence of God from the existence of morality. The Argument from Moral Awareness Very different from the argument from the fact that there are moral truths is the argument from human awareness of significant moral truths. If humans are to make significant choices at all they must have the concepts of moral goodness and badness (in my sense of overall goodness and badness). They must be able to see some actions as good to do, and of these to see some as obligatory; and to see some actions as bad, and of these, some as wrong.
There’s a plausible naturalistic account of how we would know moral truths. Here are several
1 Reasoning leads us to arrive at moral conclusions, the same way it allows us to arrive at factual conclusions and mathematical conclusions.
2 We have direct access to the badness of pain because we experience it. We can reason our way to realize that other people’s suffering is bad like ours.
3 We evolved empathy for evolutionary reasons, making us care about others when they suffer.
4 Our perceptual awareness evolved to be reliable because it increase survival.
Etc.
However, theism is a poor explanation of lots of facts about moral knowledge including
Irreconcilable moral disagreements. If God writes a moral law on our hearts, why are there irresolvable disagreements, such that smart people like Singer and Foot would probably never converge, however much they reflect.
Moral uncertainty. We know that most people have thought horrific things like slavery were morally okay throughout much of human history. Theism gives a bad account of that. We also know that many people have incorrect moral judgements that they arrive at through intuition—so many people are deceived through their intuitions. This is very surprising on theism. Why would God make us unable to reliably figure out what to do about population ethics, the trolley problem, bridge, and numerous other hard philosophical cases.
Cognitive dissonance—why are we biased by self interest in our moral deliberation, even when we don’t desire to have biased verdicts?
People who lack moral awareness—for example, moral anti realists who don’t think they’re in touch with objective morality.
Moral beliefs differing by time, place, and culture.
Many people finding the bible supportive of horrific beliefs including the purging of gay people, slavery, subjugation of women, and numerous others.
Many people’s morality leads them to conclude the problem of evil shows God doesn’t exist. It’s hard to explain God would make us deceived about morality in that way.
Chapter 10: The Argument From Providence
This argument from the opportunities we have for making significant differences I call the argument from Providence. The world in which we are placed is in this all-important respect providential. The argument echoes points made by many thinkers over the past two or three millennia; but I do not know of anyone who has put them together in the form of precise argument for the existence of God. However, these opportunities to make significant differences require the occurrence of actual evils,1 and the possible occurrence of many more evils; and the question inevitably arises of whether a good God would be right to give us these opportunities in view of the evils they bring with them
This seems probable on naturalism—there’s an evolutionary advantage to being able to affect the world. However, theism can’t explain
Why we don’t have greater ability to change the world.
Why ability to change the world is contingent on random lucky factors. MLK would have done much less if he’d been born in the third century.
Why ability to change the world differs based on time and place.
Why many people die at a young age, making them unable to change the world.
Why people often have hinderances to changing the world including severe mental disabilities that render people unable to understand the world in depth, depression that makes it hard for people to operate and improve the world, dementia, limited opportunities from birth, etc.
I have been arguing for the last few pages that a God would have reason to make a world in which agents have the opportunity to benefit or harm each other. There are a variety of different possible worlds, according to the time scale and nature of the mutual dependence involved. First you could have what I shall call a World-I. Here there would be an unchanging set of immortal humanly free agents. The world and its inhabitants would have their evils and imperfections, but the world would be perfectible by the cooperation of agents within a finite time. By the world being perfectible I mean that all evils would be removable and the world and society could be brought to a very happy and beautiful state such that no effort of agents could make it more beautiful. For the rest of eternity all they would need to do would be to keep it ticking over. There would be reason for God to make such a world—the happiness of agents is a good thing, and each agent (after enduring a little) would be able to attain it in such a world. But the trouble with such a world is that, after a finite time, agents would have nothing demanding to do. Although they could always tinker with the world, it would (once their initial labours were completed) as a result of the tinkering be no better a world than it was before; and, having attained much knowledge, agents would realize this
God could make this world be such that agents can improve it, benefitting others, but things start out very good. It’s also not clear why agents need to do anything. The reason it makes sense to help others is not so you can occupy your time, it’s so others can be helped. If everyone was unfathomably well off, no one would be bored by not doing anything other than basking in the perfection of God’s love.
For this reason God seems to me to have more reason to make what I shall call a World-II. Here once again there is an unchanging set of immortal humanly free agents, but in this case there is an infinite number of such agents, and there would be no limit to the extent to which they could go on improving each other and their world. There would be an infinite amount of world and of agents to improve, infinite knowledge and freedom to acquire; and all this in World-II would need an infinite time. However, by the very description of World-II, one good thing would be barred to agents—giving birth to new agents and forming them from the beginning of their existence. Clearly it is good that agents should have such power
Why?? Making infinite perfectly well of agents would be good even if we couldn’t give birth.
In what I call a World-III the number of immortal agents can be increased through the activity of existing agents. If a God has reason to make a World-II, he has, a fortiori, reason to make a World-III. Birth is fine, but what about death? Does a God have reason to make a world in which, either by natural causes or by the action of agents, there is death? I believe that he does have a number of reasons to make mortal agents. The first is that, if all agents are immortal, there is a certain kind of bad action (of a qualitatively different kind to other bad actions) that agents cannot do either to themselves or to others—they cannot deprive of existence. However much I may hate you or myself, I am stuck with you and me. And in this vital respect humanly free agents would not share the creative power of God. In refusing them this power, a God would refuse to trust his creatures in a crucial respect. To let a person have a gun is always a mark of profound trust.
A world in which people couldn’t kill others wouldn’t make them better off. No part of the quality of my life is determined by my ability to kill people. God trusting people to kill people wouldn’t make them well off. It doesn’t make sense to trust beings with a loaded gun if you know it will result in tons of killings. This also can’t explain non human caused death, which is most death.
Secondly, a world without death is a world without the possibility of supreme self-sacrifice and courage in the face of absolute disaster. The ultimate sacrifice is the sacrifice of oneself, and that would not be possible in a world without death. (‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’) Supreme generosity would be impossible. So too would cheerfulness and patience in the face of absolute disaster. For, in a world without death, the alternatives would always involve continuance of life and so too the possibility that others would rescue one from one’s misfortunes. There would be no absolute disaster to be faced with cheerfulness and patience
Why is self sacrifice good? It seems obvious that it’s good because of what one is sacrificed for. Sacrificing ones life to save their family is good, but it would be even better if they didn’t die. If one saves their family, they shouldn’t sacrifice their life on top of that just for the heck of it. This is because sacrifice is bad intrinsically, it’s only good overall if it achieves some grander purpose.
If we consider two worlds, one in which you can sacrifice your life to save your family, and one in which your family isn’t in danger, world two is obviously better. If this were not true then it would be good to throw grenades at families, just so that one member could have the opportunity to engage in self sacrifice.
Thirdly, a world with natural death would be a world in which an agent’s own contribution would have a seriousness about it because it would be irreversible by the agent. If I spend all my seventy years doing harm, there is no time left for me to undo it. But, if I live for ever, then, whatever harm I do, I can always undo it. It is good that what people do should matter, and their actions matter more if they have only a limited time in which to reverse them.
This isn’t true at all. Bad actions can set you back for centuries or decades. Actions don’t need eternal consequences to be serious. If I knew I’d live forever, I wouldn’t go out and do frivolous things—I still would want my life to be as good as possible, as well as the lives of others.
Also, agents being perfectly well off would make it irrelevant if their actions were eternally significant. The reason actions being significant is important is because it makes people better off. Taking significant actions that don’t improve the world wouldn’t be good. There’s no plausible theory of well-being or normative ethics that says that doing things that are irreversible is intrinsically good merely by virtue of irreversibility.
Fourthly, a world with birth but without natural death would be a world in which the young would never have a free hand. They would always be inhibited by the experience and influence of the aged
Seriously? People have to die so that the young don’t endure lectures from their grandparents—ones that they’re notorious for ignoring. Young people don’t adhere to advice by old people across the board.
There are also super easy ways around this. Just make old people go to a different place after they’ve been around 200 years or something. Or make it taboo to yap too much to young people.
The greatest value of death, however, seems to me to lie in a fifth consideration, which is in a way opposite to my second one. I wrote earlier of the great value that lies in agents having the power to harm each other. Only agents who can do this have significant power. Yet, for the sake of the potential sufferer, there must be a limit to the suffering that one agent can inflict on another. It would, I believe that we would all judge, be morally wrong for a very powerful being to give limitless power to one agent to hurt another. Giving to agents the power to kill is giving vast power of a qualitatively different kind from other power. It is very different from a power to produce endless suffering. Clearly the parent analogy suggests that it would The Argument from Providence 229 be morally wrong to give limitless power to cause suffering. A parent, believing that an elder son ought to have responsibility, may give him power for good or ill over the younger son. But a good parent will intervene eventually if the younger son suffers too much—for the sake of the younger son. A God who did not put a limit to the amount of suffering that a creature can suffer (for any good cause, including that of the responsibility of agents) would not be a good God. There need to be limits to the intensity of suffering and to the period of suffering. A natural death after a certain small finite number of years provides the limit to the period of suffering. It is a boundary to the power of an agent over another agent. For death removes agents from that society of interdependent agents in which it is good that they should play their part. True, a God could make a temporal limit to the harm that agents could do to each other without removing them from each other’s society. But that would involve agents being in mutual relation with each other while being immunized from responsibility for each other, as well as depriving them of the possibility to make the choices of great seriousness described above.
My remarks in response to the second point apply here. His worry that making people unable to continually harm people would immunize responsibility isn’t much of an argument. Why is it bad for responsibility to be immunized after a certain point. Indeed, death is effectively immunization from others.
Additionally, limited ability to harm doesn’t make people worse off. I can’t destroy the world, but that doesn’t make me worse off.
Overall, none of this explains natural suffering or death.
So far, this chapter has been concerned with the nature and circumstances that a God would have reason to give to humanly free agents. However, I suggested in Chapter 6 that God would have reason also to create conscious beings unburdened with the mixed blessing of moral awareness and free will—that is, the higher animals. I suggested that it was good that there should be beings who learn what is to their good and harm and seek the good and avoid the harm, and through doing so enjoy the world and have pleasurable sensations
But then why are most of their experiences suffering? Swinburne explains why they lack responsibility and immense power, but he doesn’t explain why they suffer so much.
Chapter 11: The Problem Of Evil
If there is a God, he permits moral evils to occur, and apparently himself brings about natural evils (through creating the natural processes that cause bad desires, disease, and accidents.) The moral and natural evils include animal pain, either caused by humans or by other animals or natural processes. However, since brain complexity and sophistication of behaviour decrease as we move further away from humans down the evolutionary scale, it seems reasonable to suppose that animal pain is less intense than human pain, and that animals feel pain less, as we go down the evolutionary scale from the primates to the least developed vertebrates. And, since the brains of invertebrates are of a different kind from those of vertebrates, I see little reason for supposing that the latter suffer pain at all
Cephalopods are invertebrates that almost certainly suffer.
I have already given reason for supposing that, in a world providential in the ways described in Chapter 10, there will be evils of certain kinds. There will inevitably be biologically useful unpleasant sensations, such as the pain that someone suffers until he escapes from a fire or the feeling of suffocation that one gets in a room full of poisonous gas, and the emotion of fear in dangerous circumstances.
Why not just give humans and other beings conscious awareness that they’re being harmed but not make them endure intense agony? Or why not make their hedonic state start out super positive but diminish if something threatens their bodily security.
Yet, as we saw in Chapter 5, even God cannot do the logically impossible. And that makes it plausible to suppose that a perfectly good God may allow an evil E to occur or bring it about if it is not logically possible or morally permissible to bring about some good G except by allowing E (or an evil equally bad) to occur or by bringing it about. I suggest that there are three further conditions that must be satisfied if, compatibly with his perfect goodness, God is to allow an evil E to occur. The second condition is that God also in fact brings The Problem of Evil 237 about the good G. Thirdly, God must not wrong the sufferer by causing or permitting the evil. He must have the right to make or permit that individual to suffer. And, finally, some sort of comparative condition must be satisfied. It cannot be as strong as the condition that G is a greater good state than E is a bad state. For obviously we are often justified in order to ensure the occurrence of a substantial good in risking the very unlikely occurrence of a greater evil.
This is plausible, but God is omnipotent, so he shouldn’t need evil for a greater good. He can just bring about the good absent the evil.
I begin with the first condition. This is evidently satisfied in the case of moral evil, as I have pointed out earlier. If humans are to have the free choice of bringing about good or evil, and the free choice thereby of gradually forming their characters, then it is logically necessary that there be the possibility of the occurrence of moral evil unprevented by God.
I addressed this before.
The first of the substantial reasons why our ability to make significant free choices would be gravely diminished in the absence of natural evil is what is known as the ‘higher-order’ defence. This claims that natural evil provides opportunities for especially valuable kinds of emotional response and free choice. It begins by pointing out that the great good of compassion (the natural emotional response to the sufferings of others) can be felt only if others are suffering. It is good that we should be involved with others emotionally, when they are at their worst as well as at their best. But of course, the objector will say, even if pain is better for the response of compassion, better still that there be no pain at all. Now obviously it would be crazy for God to multiply pains in order to multiply compassion. But I suggest that a world with some pain and some compassion is at least as good as a world with no pain and so no compassion. For it is good to have a deep concern for others; and the concern can be a deep and serious one only if things are bad with the sufferer. One cannot worry about someone’s condition unless there is something bad or likely to be bad about it. If things always went well with someone, there would be no scope for anyone’s deep concern. It is good that the range of our compassion should be wide, extending far in time and space. The sorrow of one in a distant land who really cares for the starving in Ethiopia or the blinded in 240 The Problem of Evil India or the victims of carnivorous dinosaurs millions of years ago is compassion for a fellow creature, even though the latter does not feel it; and the world is better for there being such concern.
Compassion isn’t intrinsically good. If compassion lead people to do bad things, that would be bad. It’s only good if it improves lives.
Compassion doesn’t need pain. We could have compassion just by hoping people would be better off. For example, I think people show compassion hoping that I have a fun birthday relative to a less fun birthday, even though neither would involve pain.
Is there compassion in heaven? If yes, that proves that compassion needs no pain.
God could make us compassionate absent pain, because he is omnipotent.
Worst case scenario, God would just make a bit of pain so we could be compassionate.
If this is true, then it’s good to cause pain so we can increase compassion. This is clearly absurd.
This can’t explain pain for which people don’t experience compassion such as suffering in dreams, ineffable pains, and unobserved natural evils.
This also can’t explain suffering that we can’t affect, which includes most suffering throughout history.
But could not the absence of a good (of an ability to walk, say, or the ability to talk French) give to the victim equal opportunity: whether to endure it with patience, or whether to bemoan his lot; and to friends, whether to show sympathy or whether to be callous? To answer this question, it is important to consider why pain is a bad state and so, if uncaused by humans (and not negligently allowed to occur by them), a natural evil. Pain is a sensation of a kind that we do not dislike if we have it in a very weak degree; indeed, we may often like it—we may like the sensation of warmth, which we dislike if it gets a lot stronger and becomes a sensation of great heat. And there are a few abnormal people who appear not to dislike the sensations that we call ‘pains’ at all. A sensation is a pain and so a natural evil only in so far as it is strongly disliked. Any state of affairs not caused (or negligently allowed to occur) by humans, disliked as strongly, would be just as bad. Some people dislike their disabilities just as much as they dislike pain; they so dislike their inability to walk that they will undertake a programme to conquer it that involves their ‘overcoming the pain barrier’. True, it would be unusual for anyone to dislike anything quite as much as some of the pains caused by disease or accident (and to call those pains ‘intense’ just is to say how much they are disliked). And, for that reason, pain normally provides more opportunity for evincing patience rather than selfpity than does anything else. But any state of affairs disliked as much would be equally bad and so provide as much opportunity. And the choice between being sympathetic rather than callous matters more then than it does if the suffering is less. If the absence of the good is not disliked nearly as much as the sensations caused by disease and accident, then, of course, it is still very good to show courage in bearing that absence, but the courage is not in the face of such strong dislike for the existing state of affairs
This seems clearly false. Enduring personal sacrifice (say giving up your leg to prevent someone from losing both their legs, making their life still good but much worse) is not categorically different from sacrificing ones life to save others.
So, by bringing about the natural evil of pain and other suffering, God provides an evil such that allowing it, or an equally bad evil, to occur makes possible, and is the only morally permissible way in which he can make possible, many good states. It is good that the intentional actions of serious response to natural evil that I have been describing should be available also to simple creatures lacking free will. As we saw earlier, good actions may be good without being freely chosen. It is good that there be animals who show courage in the face of pain, to secure food and to find and rescue their mates and their young, and who show sympathetic concern for other animals. An animal life is of so much greater value for the heroism it shows. And, if the animal does not freely choose the good action, it will do the action only because on balance it desires to do so; and, when its desire to act is uncomplicated by conflicting desires, the good action will be spontaneous. And (even if complicated by conflicting desires), animal actions of sympathy, affection, courage, and patience are great goods.
Why? The reason helping others is good is not because it’s good for you, but because it’s good for others. Making the world worse so we can sacrifice to make it better is a less desirable state of affairs.
This also can’t explain most animals being r strategists, having oodles of offspring and not caring for them at all. Tuna, for example, lay 10 million eggs.
True, the deterministic forces that lead to animals performing good actions sometimes lead to animals doing bad intentional actions—they may reject their offspring or wound their kin—and in this case the bad action cannot be attributed to free will. Nevertheless, such bad actions, like physical pain, provide opportunities for good actions to be done in response to them; for example, the persistence, despite rejection, of the offspring in seeking the mother’s love or the love of another animal; the courage of the wounded animal in seeking food, especially for its young, despite the wound. And so on. The world would be much the poorer without the courage of a wounded lion continuing to struggle despite its wound, the courage of the deer in escaping from the lion, the courage of the deer in decoying the lion to chase her instead of her offspring, the mourning of the bird for the lost mate. God could have made a world in which animals got nothing but thrills out of life; but their life is richer for the complexity and difficulty of the tasks they face and the hardships to which they react appropriately.
Better for whom? Surely it would be better for the lion if they didn’t endure immense suffering to help their loved ones, relative to a world in which neither them nor their loved ones suffer. This also can’t explain teleological evils at all.
This also can’t explain very simple animals like fish who don’t care much about others or learn much, but who do suffer.
The Argument from the Need for Knowledge The second substantial reason why without natural evils, such as disease and accident, our ability to make significant free choices would be greatly diminished is that natural evils provide us with the knowledge required to make such choices. Natural evils are necessary if agents are to have the knowledge of how to bring about evil or prevent its occurrence, knowledge that they must have if they are to have a genuine choice between bringing about evil and bringing about good. Or rather, they are necessary if agents are to have this knowledge without being deprived of the good of rational response to evidence, and rational inquiry
Why can’t we gain other more important knowledge,
Why can’t we just have direct access to this knowledge, the same way we do to lots of other knowledge?
Why is knowledge good? It seems only good instrumentally. We don’t value useless knowledge, because knowledge is only good if it betters lives. That’s why it’s not good to know about the number of stars in the galaxy, the number of mosquito bites, or the number of Canadians.
If this is true then it would be bad to eradicate evil because that gets rid of knowledge gained through that evil.
This can’t explain mysterious evils or evils that we can’t prevent.
God has knowledge, yet he is not subject to evil.
We saw in Chapters 6 and 8 that there need to be regular connections between an agent’s bodily states and events beyond his body if he is to be able intentionally to perform mediated actions—that is, by his basic actions intentionally to produce effects beyond his body. But, if he is to acquire knowledge of how to perform these mediated actions by rational inference from observations of regularities in the world, and if he is to have the choice of whether to try to acquire this knowledge by rational inquiry (that is, by looking for such regularities), these regularities must be simple and observable, and the agent will need to extrapolate from what he observes by the criteria for a theory and so its predictions being probably true, as described in Chapter 3—what I shall call normal inductive inference. The simplest case of normal inductive inference is where I infer that a present state of affairs C will be followed by a future state E, from the generalization that, in the past, states of affairs like C on all occasions of which The Problem of Evil 245 I have knowledge have been followed by states like E. Because on the many occasions of which I have knowledge a piece of chalk being liberated from the hand has fallen to the floor, I can infer that the next time chalk is liberated it will fall. However, as we saw in Chapter 3, normal induction may take a more complicated form. From a vast collection of data about the positions of the sun, moon, and planets a scientist may infer a consequence of a different kind—for example, that there will be a very high tide on earth when the moon is in suchand-such a position. Here the data render probable a scientific theory of which the prediction about the high tide is a somewhat remote consequence: the similarities between the data and the prediction are more remote than in the simplest cases. (But the similarities exist and are the basis of the prediction. In both the data and the prediction there are material bodies attracting each other.)
Why is normal induction being the way we learn things so good that it’s worth killing thousands of children every day? Additionally, we learn things in other ways that are equally good, such as through deduction and intuition. Also, this doesn’t explain suffering because that’s a result of non deterministic mental laws on Swinburne’s view. Finally, there could be predictable laws without enormous suffering.
Now, for any evil that people knowingly inflict on each other, there must have been a first time in human history at which this was done. There must have been a first murder, a first murder by cyanide poisoning, a first deliberate humiliation, and so on. The malevolent agent in each case knows the consequence of the result of his action (for example, that causing someone to imbibe cyanide will lead to their death). Ex hypothesi, he cannot know this through having seen an agent give another person cyanide for this purpose. His knowledge that cyanide poisoning causes death must come from his having seen or others’ having told him that on other occasions taking cyanide accidentally led to death. (If, in my example, you think that knowledge of the effects of imbibing cyanide might be gained by seeing the effects of taking similar chemicals, the argument can be put more generally. Some person must have taken previously a similar poison by accident.) What applies to the malevolent agent also applies to the person who knowingly refrains from inflicting evil on another or stops evil occurring to another. There must be naturally occurring evils (that is, evils not knowingly caused by humans) if humans are to know how to cause evils themselves or are to prevent evils occurring. And there have to be many such evils, if humans are to have sure knowledge, for, as we saw, sure knowledge of what will happen in the future comes only by induction from many past instances. A solitary instance of a person dying after taking cyanide will not give to others very sure knowledge that in general cyanide causes death—maybe the death on the occasion studied had a different cause, and the cyanide poisoning had nothing to do with it. And, unless people have knowingly been bringing about evils of a certain kind recently, there have to have been many recent naturally occurring evils if people are currently to have sure knowledge of how to bring about or prevent such evils.
Similar remarks apply to the ones given above. God could give us this knowledge intrinsically, this can’t explain the degree of suffering, it can’t explain psychophysical laws, and it can’t explain the majority of animal suffering which has been going on for billions of years.
Normal inductive inference from the past is not the only possible route to knowledge of the future.Why do we need to acquire this knowledge by rational response to evidence? Why could not God ensure that we simply found ourselves having true basic beliefs that this action would cause pain and that action would cause pleasure, for actions of various kinds and pleasures and pains of various kinds?7 A basic belief is one that we find ourselves having, not on the basis of inference from other beliefs, and from which we may infer to other things that we then come to believe. For example, for most of us, the immediate deliverances of perception—that I am looking at a tree, or listening to a lecture—come to us as basic beliefs. By the Principle of Credulity, which I defend in Chapter 13, all basic beliefs with which agents find themselves are—in the absence of counter evidence—probably true; the mere fact that you have a belief is grounds for believing it. This route to knowledge of the future would be inductive, but not use induction of the normal kind. Given that (for the good reason adduced on p. 226) our world is a world of decay, our basic beliefs would need to include beliefs about what will happen if we do nothing—for example, about when a disease epidemic will strike unless we begin a programme of inoculation. It would not, however, be possible for any of us to know with any reasonable certainty all the long-term consequences of our actions, since those long-term consequences depend on whether other free agents help or hinder our actions attaining the consequences that we intend. So the most that would be possible is for us to know those consequences that are independent of the actions of others, and also conditional consequences (for example, ‘if no one else interferes, action A will have consequence C’). But, if God gave us true basic beliefs about the consequences of all our actions subject to those restrictions, we would know what would be the whole future of the world if humans did not interfere with it, and what would happen if they did interfere with it in various ways. And so, among the other things that we would know would be the outcomes of all the experiments we might do to attempt to confirm any scientific or metaphysical theory. We could still decide between competing theories on the basis of the a priori criteria of simplicity and scope. But the decision would be limited to a decision between theories that had exactly the same observable consequences as each other (even in the distant future); and in consequence the interest and importance of such a decision would be extremely low. For a major reason why some conclusion that a certain theory is more probable than some other is of great interest and importance is that the former makes predictions that the latter does not. But in the postulated situation we would not need to do science in order to know the future. As things are in the actual world, most moral decisions are decisions taken in uncertainty about the consequences of our actions, even if we discount the possibility of interference by other agents. I do not know for certain that, if I smoke, I will get cancer; or that, if I refuse to give money to Oxfam, another person will starve to death. Maybe I will be one of the ones who does not get cancer, and maybe my failing to make my small gift to Oxfam will make no difference to the number of people who starve to death. For suppose that the only difference made by the absence of my gift is that each starving person gets an allocation of food a tiny bit smaller than what they would have got anyway; and I know that this will be the immediate effect of my action. But what I may not know is whether that difference of allocation is so small as to make no difference to the future condition of the starving. So we have to make our moral decisions on the basis of how probable it is that our actions will have various outcomes—how probable it is that I will get cancer if I continue to smoke (when I would not otherwise get cancer) or that someone will starve if I do not give (when they would not starve otherwise). These decisions under uncertainty are not merely the normal moral decisions; they are also the hard ones. Since probabilities are so hard to assess, it is all too easy to persuade yourself that it is worth taking the chance that no harm will result from the less demanding decision (that is, the decision that you have a strong desire to make). And, even if you face up to a correct assessment of the probabilities, true dedication to the good is shown by doing the act that, although it is probably the best action, may have no good consequences at all. But if we are often in this situation (and for the above reasons it is good that we should be), then it is good (because we rightly seek to do good actions) that we should have the opportunity to obtain more certain knowledge of the consequences of our actions—that will involve getting more data about the consequences of events, for example, data from the past about what has happened to people who have smoked in ignorance of the possibility that smoking causes cancer. Seeking more certain knowledge, in other words, involves once again relying on normal induction. Above all, if our knowledge of the consequences of our actions is limited, we have the all-important choice of whether or not to pursue scientific inquiry to extend our knowledge, and of teaching or not teaching others the results of such inquiry. The rationality that is necessary if we are to make serious moral choices is, quite apart from its value for this purpose, a great good in itself. One of the very greatest glories of humans is their ability to be responsive to evidence and reach probable conclusions about the effects of their actions, about how the world works, and about what is our origin and destiny. Rationality is a quality for which it is worth paying a considerable price. We rightly value greatly the scientist who investigates the causes and effects of things and who opens himself to applying objectively correct criteria to discovering how nature operates, and about which events cause pain and which cause pleasure. And it is a further glory of humans that they cooperate in the activity of reaching probable conclusions; some humans teach others, and the others build on those foundations. And humans have the choice whether or not to investigate, to cooperate in investigation, and to teach the results of investigation. To have these various serious moral choices, we need initially to be (more or less) ignorant of the consequences of our actions, for good or evil. The occurrence of natural evil gives us the choice of improving our knowledge of these consequences, which we cannot obtain in any other way without a serious loss of good.
I dispute that this knowledge is intrinsically good.
Direct awareness is a rational method of belief—even regarding probability judgements.
God could give us ways of gaining moral knowledge without suffering. For example, giving us a complex moral sense that requires difficult decisions.
Why is making tough moral decisions good? It seems like perhaps choosing to do right is good, but not knowing what’s right certainly isn’t.
Swinburne next argues God could allow evil for greater good, which I agree with.
It may be urged that, despite the good ends that its actual or possible occurrence serves, there is too much evil in the world. My fourth condition for a perfectly good God to allow or bring about some evil is that it is probable that the good will outweigh any evil necessary for attaining it. And, even if it does outweigh it, there are—we have noted—limits to God’s right to impose evil. So—is there in the world too much evil for a perfectly good God to have imposed it? An objector may agree that one does need a substantial amount of various kinds of evil in order to provide the opportunity for greater goods, and in particular a choice of destiny for human beings. But he may feel that there is just too much evil in the world, and that less evil would produce adequate benefit. It might be said that a God could give to man choice enough by allowing him to inflict quite a bit of pain on his fellows, and could deter humans from harmful actions by some nasty headaches. In our world, the objection goes, things are too serious. There is too much evil that humans can do to their fellows, and too many and too unpleasant natural evils to subserve the good of the opportunities for sympathetic and courageous response and for rational inference and inquiry that they give to humans. The suffering of children and animals is something that rightly often appals us. This is, I believe, the crux of the problem of evil. It is not the fact of evil or the kinds of evil that are the real threat to theism: it is the quantity of evil—both the number of people (and animals) who suffer and the amount that they suffer. If there is a God, the objector says in effect he has given humans too much choice. He has inflicted too much suffering on too many people (and animals) for the purpose of making it possible for them to have a free choice and to make greatly significant differences to themselves, each other, and the world on the basis of knowledge obtained by rational inquiry. No God ought to have allowed Hiroshima, the Holocaust, the Lisbon Earthquake, or the Black Death, claims the objector. With the objection that, if there is a God, he has overdone it, I feel considerable initial sympathy. The objection seems to count against the claim that there is a God.
But then I reflect that each bad state or possible bad state eliminated eliminates one actual good. Each small addition to the number of actual or possible bad states makes a small addition to the number of actual or possible good states. Suppose that one less person had been burnt by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Then there would have been less opportunity for courage and sympathy; one less piece of information about the effects of atomic radiation, less people (relatives of the person burnt) who would have had a strong desire to campaign for nuclear disarmament and against imperialist expansion. And so on. Of course removal of one bad state or the possibility of one bad state will not remove much good, any more than the removal of one grain of sand will make much difference to the fact that you still have a heap of sand. But the removal of one grain of sand will make a bit of difference, and so will the removal of one bad state.
This is false, many evils don’t achieve any good. If one fewer animal had died that we’ll never know about, child had died of malaria in immense agony, or person had gotten dementia, it’s not plausible that there would be some greater good that would have been lost. Imagine you could prevent covid from transferring to humans: you should obviously do so. Yet God was in that situation and did not. He is similarly in this situation for every single disease in the world—and all non disease bad things.
If you really think evils have some good that makes them overall improve the world, then we shouldn’t try to rid the world of evil, because doing so makes the world worse. After all, if malaria has some divine purpose, making the world overall better, then a world without malaria would be worse, so we shouldn’t try to get rid of malaria. It just isn’t plausible that there are no evils that would make the world better in their absence.
What, in effect, the objector is asking is that God shall very greatly diminish the number of sufferers and intensity of the suffering produced by natural processes, and the harm that humans can do to each other. What this means is that, yes, there should be diseases, but not ones that maim or kill; accidents that incapacitate people for a year or two but not for life; we could cause each other pain or not help each other to acquire knowledge, but not damage our own or each other’s characters. And our influence would be limited to those with whom we come into contact; there would be no possibility of influencing for good or ill distant generations. And most of our beliefs about how to cause effects, good or evil, would be beliefs with which we would be born. Such a world would be a toy-world; a world where things matter, but not very much; where we can choose and our choices can make a small difference, but the real choices remain God’s. The objector is asking that God should not be willing to be generous and trust us with his world, and give us occasional opportunities to show ourselves at our heroic best.
This is fundamentally confused. Imagine the following dialogue.
Person 1: “You should eat healthier food.”
Person 2: “Okay, but there’s lots of unhealthy food which I really enjoy and would decrease my quality of life if I didn’t eat it.”
Person 1: “Okay, but there is also lots of unhealthy food you don’t enjoy. Examples include twinkies, kid-kats, and raw beef. You’ve said you don’t enjoy them and they’re unhealthy, so stop eating them".”
Person 2: “But you’re really asking me to cut out all unhealthy food.”
Person 1: “Well, I think you probably should, but right now my claim is that there is at least one of the foods you eat that you should stop eating. Whatever else I may claim, you should stop eating some of those things.”
In this case, it’s obvious that person 2 doesn’t have the best possible diet. Evil is the same. Maybe we think the world should have no evil, or far less evil. However, at the very least, there is some evil which shouldn’t exist.
If someone claimed another should be less annoying, the fact that some annoyance might be necessary would not mean they should let out loud squeals for no reason, just to be annoying.
It’s also not clear why a world in which millions of kids didn’t die of disease would be a toy world. Presumably heaven isn’t a toy world where nothing matters. God could make everyone perfectly well off.
I have already suggested that God would not have the right to give anyone an earthly life that is on balance bad unless he provided for them a compensatory period of good life after death. To add to theism the hypothesis that he does so is to complicate theism. I am also inclined to suggest that, if God makes humans (and animals) suffer to the extent to which he does, albeit for good purposes, he would in virtue of his perfect goodness share our suffering himself. (He would recognize it as a best act to do so.) We think that good 264 The Problem of Evil parents who make their children eat a plain diet because of some disease that they have will often share that diet (although they do not themselves suffer from the disease); or, if they make their children play with difficult neighbouring children who are badly in need of friendship, they will show special friendship to the neighbouring parents (even if the parents are less in need of friendship). Good kings and queens share the suffering that they demand of their subjects for good purposes (for example, to win a war against an oppressor), even if the suffering of the king or queen itself would not help to forward that particular good purpose. If he makes us suffer as much as we do, God must become incarnate and share our suffering. But to add to theism the hypothesis that he does so is further to complicate theism. For, while his allowing the kinds of evil that he does is as such compatible with his perfect goodness, and not unexpected in view of the good states that it makes possible, my concern (as that of most people who are concerned with the problem of evil ) is with the degree of that evil (the amount particular individuals have to suffer). That, my claim is, God would be justified in allowing only if he provides a compensatory period of good life after death (where necessary) and perhaps also shares the suffering of humans and animals by becoming incarnate.While I am not myself confident that there are any humans such that it would be better for them not to have lived, let me nevertheless allow the objector his claim that there are such. In that case theism needs one or may be two additional complicating hypotheses. Given them, and so the additional good that the additional evil makes possible, the degree of evil is not unexpected. For God might well be expected to ask a lot from us in order to give a lot to us
This is no explanation for evil. The fact that in the long term things will turn out good isn’t a justification for why small children die of cancer and little old ladies burn to death.
God being incarnate doesn’t prevent the world’s suffering.
I think Swinburne is wrong, there are people with lives not worth living (see here for some very horrific examples that will probably make you very sad).
Whether lives are overall worth living or not doesn’t affect whether or not God has a reason for allowing specific examples of evil.
Finally, Swinburne believes in hell, so there will be lives that aren’t worth living.
Note further that, while evil may provide a good C-inductive argument against the existence of God (bare theism); it does not provide a good C-inductive argument against Christian theism (theism plus the central Christian doctrines incorporated in creeds), for life after death8 and God becoming incarnate are already part of the more detailed hypothesis of Christian theism; which, because of its more detailed character (its greater scope), is always as such less probable than bare theism. So any further evidence in favour of these two detailed Christian claims9 will diminish further the force of the C-inductive argument. (And if the only extra hypothesis required were life after death, then, since that is part of many more specific forms of theism (for example, Islam), evil would not provide a good C-inductive argument against these forms of theism.)
Christian theism does not have the resources to account for evil, for reasons I describe here, here, and here.
Swinburne then moves onto hiddenness writing
My answer is twofold. Agnosticism makes possible a good for the agnostic, and it makes possible a good for the religious believer. To start with the former—a deep conviction of the existence of God inhibits someone’s ability to choose freely between good and evil. It makes it too easy to choose the good for anyone who has either a strong desire to be liked by good persons (and especially any on whom he depends for his existence), stronger than any contrary bad desire; or a strong desire for his own future well-being combined with a strong belief that it is quite likely that a God would not provide a good afterlife for bad people. Why it makes it too easy to choose the good is because, as we saw earlier, in order for someone to have a free choice between good and evil, he needs temptation—a (balance of) desire to do what is evil, which he can then resist, if he so chooses. Our good desires have to be outweighed in their causal influence on us by our evil desires if we are to make a free choice in favour of the good.
But then it’s bad to convince people God exists.
The agnosticism of the agnostic also makes possible a great good for the religious believer. It allows the believer to have the awesome choice of helping or not helping the agnostic to understand who is the source of his existence and of his ultimate well-being (helping the agnostic not merely by verbal preaching but by an example of what living a religious life is like). The existence of honest agnosticism may, if there is a God, be due to the failures of believers to help agnostics in these ways. But while, if there is a God, there are these good states that the evil of agnosticism makes possible, the goodness of these states (as of some of the other good states discussed in this chapter) depends on their being temporary. Agnosticism allows the agnostic to make a more serious commitment to the good than he would be able to make if the presence of God were more obvious. As his earthly life progresses, so he begins to form his character for good or ill. Once he has become committed to the good, the advantage of agnosticism in helping him to do it with great seriousness disappears. If he makes himself a good person, he makes himself a person ready to worship his creator if he learns that he exists, whether in this life or another one. And the goodness for the religious believer of the existence of agnosticism is for him to have the opportunity to abolish it. It loses its point if the believer makes himself so hard-hearted as to be indifferent to it. So, of course, if God has made us, it is a great good that he should show us his presence, and I shall be arguing in the next two chapters that he does show his presence to many humans. And there would be no good in the existence of agnosticism for the religious believer if there were no religious believers. So some must be aware of the presence of God (either through religious experience or seeing the force of arguments) if the existence of agnosticism is to provide an opportunity for them.
But if agnosticism is good then making people aware of God would be bad.
I think Swinburne’s account is fine if one doesn’t think that those who don’t believe in God will burn forever. If they do, not so much.
To be continued.
Chapter 12 Arguments from History and Miracles
Swinburne does lots of tedious analysis of why and how miracles would confirm theism—I largely agreed.
Incarnation It would be appropriate before concluding this chapter to illustrate in more detail the role of the founding miracle of Christianity, that religion among the major religions in which miracles have had the most important role. Christianity has claimed that there is one special event that God had reason to bring about, a particular intervention of himself into the world that he made, an incarnation. Suppose that the human race gets into a really bad mess. Suppose that people so abuse their freedom that they teach others evil and not good. They do not altogether know which actions are right and which are wrong, and they conceal from themselves even what they do know. They show little interest in where they came from (for example, whether they have a creator to whom thanks and service are appropriate), or in whether their existence has any point and their race any destiny. They do not care for their fellows, but live for self. Now the Christian view is roughly that such was the human condition at the outset of civilization; and that, but for various, especially Christian, influences from without, it still is. Now whether this Christian view is correct here is of course a matter for argument, which will turn both on issues of history and psychology and on moral issues; and once again there is no space to pursue these issues. However, few at the beginning of the twenty-first century would deny that this view has a certain plausibility. Suppose that this Christian view of the human condition is correct. What does God have reason for doing about it?
The prior probability of God doing Jesus miracles is very low. No Jew in the 5th century would have guessed God was sending down his son soon—it’s only a post hoc justification. So our prior can’t be very high.
There may be more than one thing that God has reason for doing about such a human condition; but one kind of response that God has reason to make is the following. He might conclude that things had gone so wrong that an atonement was needed; that the human race ought by sacrificial action to show its contrition to its creator. Yet he might also conclude that it was not within the capacity of a fallen race to make this kind of atonement; and that, if atonement was to be made, it would have to be made on behalf of the race by a human being preserved from the worst influences to which humanity was normally subject. But it would not be right of God to single out any ordinary human being to make such a sacrifice. God could insist on the sacrifice of none other but himself. So God has a reason to bring about an incarnation of some kind by himself becoming human in order to make an atonement. Once again, there are big Christian assumptions here which there is no space to discuss—for example, whether atonement of this kind is morally good, or whether it is better for people just to forget wrongdoing; and there is also a big philosophical assumption—that it is coherent to suppose that a God can become incarnate (perhaps there is some self-contradiction in supposing a God to become a human being), and there is not space to discuss that issue either. But, in order to continue the argument further, let us suppose that the Christian moral view of the propriety of atonement is correct, and that the concept of an incarnation is coherent. As well as concluding that an incarnation to make atonement would be a good thing, God might also conclude that the human race needed a new start with a supreme leader and inspirer to found a society in which his work would be continued. The leader would need to teach the race moral truths that it had only dimly perceived; perhaps, in virtue of his status, also to give it new moral laws, and to show it by example how to behave. Yet again, to preserve human freedom, the powers of the leader and of the society must not be too evident or too ‘supernatural’. And thirdly and most importantly, God might decide to impose on the human race a very considerable burden of evil for the sake of the very considerable good that it makes possible. In that case, as I argued in the last chapter, it would be not merely very good but obligatory for God to become incarnate to share the burden with us.
For these reasons, given the stated assumptions, if there is a God and if the human condition falls low, we may well expect there to appear on Earth a human being who lived a humble and sacrificial life and suffered the evil that humans do to other people (for example, by suffering an unjust death at their hands), who taught great moral and religious truths, who even suggested that he was God, and who founded a society to continue his work. He might manifest the divine compassion by healing, and the divine power by apparently violating natural laws in order to do so. He might show to people that his atonement availed and that it was possible for them in his new society to reform the world, by natural laws being violated in a supreme way by his resurrection from the dead. All of this, however, would be none too obvious in order that it might remain a genuine option for human beings to reject this claim of a divine incarnation. If we have evidence that things have happened like that, as in the Christian story of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and if we also have reason for believing the stated moral and other assumptions to be true, then that all confirms the claim that there is a God, for God has reason for bringing about such a state of affairs—namely, the good of humans. The analogy of the very good parent or very good spouse who makes a supreme sacrifice to save the lost child or spouse also suggests that some such thing is to be expected. Of course God may have reasons for not bringing about such a state. There may be alternative states of affairs that he has good reason to bring about instead. But there are certainly alternative states of affairs that he would appear to have overriding reason not to bring about—for example, the human race left eternally to make itself miserable through the original bad half-conscious choices of sinners in the centuries before Christ. Hence the occurrence of events of the type described is more probable if there is a God than if there is not, and so their occurrence would be evidence for his existence.
No!! No one would expect God to send down his son to be weirdly sacrificed toa atone for his sins. His son who is also him sord’ve and has been around forever as part of him, fully human and fully divine. Strangely, his son had limited historical evidence making him hard to discern from other historical figures and made numerous false or bizarre claims, while condemning handwashing as pompous and pretentious. The accounts of his life constantly contradict, as Pearce points out
“• What were the last words of Jesus? Three gospels give three
different versions.
• Who buried Jesus? Matthew says that it was Joseph of
Arimathea. No, apparently it was the Jews and their rulers, all
strangers to Jesus (Acts).
• How many women came to the tomb Easter morning? Was it
one, as told in John? Two (Matthew)? Three (Mark)? Or more
(Luke)?
• Did an angel cause a great earthquake that rolled back the stone
in front of the tomb? Yes, according to Matthew. The other gospels
are silent on this extraordinary detail.
• Who did the women see at the tomb? One person (Matthew and
Mark) or two (Luke and John)?
• Was the tomb already open when they got there? Matthew says
no; the other three say yes.
• Did the women tell the disciples? Matthew and Luke make clear
that they did so immediately. But Mark says, “Trembling and
bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said
nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And that’s where the
book ends, which makes it a mystery how Mark thinks that the
resurrection story ever got out.
• Did Mary Magdalene cry at the tomb? That makes sense—the
tomb was empty and Jesus’s body was gone. At least, that’s the
story according to John. But wait a minute—in Matthew’s account,
the women were “filled with joy.”
• Did Mary Magdalene recognize Jesus? Of course! She’d known
him for years. At least, Matthew says that she did. But John and
Luke make clear that she didn’t.
• Could Jesus’s followers touch him? John says no; the other
gospels say yes.
• Where did Jesus tell the disciples to meet him? In Galilee
(Matthew and Mark) or Jerusalem (Luke and Acts [and John])?
• Who saw Jesus resurrected? Paul says that a group of over 500
people saw him (1 Cor. 15:6). Sounds like crucial evidence, but
why don’t any of the gospels record it?
• Should the gospel be preached to everyone? In Matthew 28:19,
Jesus says to “teach all nations.” But hold on—in the same book he
says, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the
Samaritans” (Matt. 10:5). Which is it?”
There is clearly some historical evidence for all this, including the testimony of witnesses to the crucial event of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which, if it occurred, would be beyond reasonable doubt a violation of natural laws. There is no space in this book to discuss whether it is very good evidence, nor is there space to discuss the moral and metaphysical assumptions that are required if that event (if it happened) is in its turn to be evidence of the central doctrines of the Christian religion.6 My concern here has been merely to point out what sort of evidence is relevant to this issue and to point out that such evidence would also be evidence for the existence of God, would provide a good C-inductive argument for his existence. It is, of course, very unlikely that I or the reader would think that God was very likely to do the sort of thing described unless we had had some contact with the Christian tradition or some religious tradition with similarities to the Christian one, and had thus come to believe that the condition of the human race was poor, and that there was a need for atonement and example. But that is no reason for supposing that what we think is not true. Unless I had been brought up in the tradition of Western mathematics, I would be unlikely to believe that there is no greatest prime number; for I would not even have the concept of a prime number. But once I have derived from tradition the relevant concepts, I am in a position to assess the proof that there is no greatest prime number. Likewise, in order to come to believe the Christian (or any other) religious system, we need first to be taught what the system claims; only then are we in a position to assess whether or not it is true.
It’s very bad evidence…
Chapter 13 The Argument from Religious Experience
If there is a God, one might well expect him not merely to concern himself with the progress of the human race by providing opportunities for humans to do worthwhile things, or providing a revelation at a particular moment in history, or to concern himself with particular individuals by fulfilling their prayers; but also perhaps to show himself to and speak individually to at any rate some of the people whom he has made and who are capable of thinking about God and worshipping him. Certainly one would not expect too evident and public manifestations, for the reason that I gave in Chapter 11. If God’s existence and intentions became items of evident common knowledge, then our freedom to choose between good and evil would be vastly curtailed. However, one might expect certain private and occasional manifestations by God to some people, although perhaps not to everyone, again for the reason that I gave in Chapter 11. The argument from religious experience claims that this has often occurred; many have experienced God (or some supernatural thing connected with God) and hence know and can tell us of his existence.
Many don’t have religious experience which theism can’t explain
We know with certainty that most religious experiences must be wrong, because they diverge. It thus can’t be evidence because we know that it’s usually false. God must be popping around providing inconsistent revelation.
To quote Carrier once again, “We have evidence of divine communications going back tens of thousands of years (in shamanic cave art, the crafting of religious icons, ritual burials, and eventually shrines, temples, and actual writing, on stone and clay, then parchment, papyrus and paper). Theism without added excuses predicts that all communications from the divine would be consistently the same at all times in history and across all geographical regions, and presciently in line with the true facts of the world and human existence, right from the start. Atheism predicts, instead, that these communications will be pervasively inconsistent across time and space, and full of factual errors about the world and human existence, exactly matching the ignorance of the culture “experiencing the divine” at that time. And guess what? We observe exactly what atheism predicts; not at all what theism predicts. And again, adding excuses for that, only makes theism even more improbable.”
We can also give a very plausible naturalistic account of unreliable religious experience in a way we can’t for vision.
Well, thanks for reading everyone!