Debate With Bitchspot Blog About Theism Part 1: My Opening Statement

Beginning a written debate

Here I’ll be doing a written debate with the author of the “Bitchspot” blog about the existence of God. This is part 1.

There are two things that determine the quality of a hypothesis: first, its prior probability—how initially likely it is before you gather evidence—and second, its explanation of the evidence. If we’re trying to figure out if some person cheated in poker, we’d start by looking if it’s plausible that they might cheat. Because cheating in poker is a more intrinsically probable explanation than that a demon made someone get lucky, we should think, if someone gets ridiculous luck, they cheated. Next, we’ll look at the evidence for their cheating—looking at how lucky they got. When figuring out whether theism is true, we should do the same thing; look at whether it’s initially plausible and then whether it explains evidence. My core argument is that theism is a very initially plausible hypothesis and that it is good at explaining lots of the data.

What makes a hypothesis good?  Well, being simple and not having arbitrary limits.  Before we discovered that the speed of light was real, we were justified in thinking that there was no speed of light because it was a limit—and those need explanations.   Similarly, it would be irrational to posit that space just ends at some point, for no reason.  Theism is a good view for the same reason evolution is: it’s very inherently plausible and it explains lots of other things.

This brings me to my first main argument—theism is an extremely simple hypothesis.  It posits just one fundamental thing: unlimited goodness.  A single being of unlimited goodness is God.  And goodness doesn’t break down into simpler units—goodness is irreducible.  When you say something is good you’re not describing the natural features of something—how much it weighs, what color it is, or anything else about its physical properties—you’re describing something fundamental about it, namely, whether it’s good.  So goodness is fundamental.  But any theory that takes an unlimited amount of a fundamental thing is a very simple theory.  Thus, theism posits just one thing—perfection—which makes it a very good theory.  

For many years, I was a confident atheist.  But as an atheist, there were certain things that I felt I couldn’t explain—things that theism are naturally explained.  So here, I’ll talk about 4 of the various facts that are best explained by theism, that really kept me up at night when I was a confident atheist.  As an atheist, I began to feel like a denier of evolution, having to sweep facts under the rug that are well-explained by the alternative, simple hypothesis.  The more I studied philosophy, the more of these puzzles I found, where I felt like some new deep problem emerged, that was impossible to solve absent theism.  

First, we have unbelievably complex and finely-tuned laws and constants.  Think about the laws of physics—they’re these complicated equations with all these numbers.  We happened to get one of the sets of laws of physics that produces something interesting.  But the vast majority of possible fundamental laws would produce nothing interesting.  In fact, there are an infinite number of fundamental laws much simpler than ours that would produce nothing interesting—all particles could move in a circle at 1 mile per hour, or 2, or 3, all the way up to infinity: particles could all go right, or left, or in a square, or triangle, or rectangle, or pentagon, or any of the other infinite shapes.  Each of these laws are much simpler than hours.  

Simpler laws are more inherently likely.  But if there are an infinite number of laws that are likelier than ours, then our laws must have a prior probability of zero!  If an infinite number of things are more likely than some event, then that event can’t have anything above 0% probability.  So that means that whatever the fundamental laws are, they will have a prior probability of zero.  Only theism can explain something this improbable, for we’d expect a God to create laws that exhibit complexity.  

Positing a multiverse doesn’t help you here because a multiverse is just a set of laws that produce a bunch of universes.  But why did we get one of the fundamental laws that produces a bunch of universes rather than some other fundamental laws?  This just pushes the problem back a step to the question of why there are laws that generate a multiverse—something which will again have a prior probability of zero.  

Even on top of the improbability of laws producing anything interesting, have very narrowly finely-tuned constants.  If you tweaked the strength of gravity by a tiny bit, or the strong nuclear force, or the cosmological constant, life couldn’t have arisen, nor could any complex structures.  As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes “The initial entropy of the universe must have been exceedingly low. According to Penrose, universes “resembling the one in which we live” (2004: 343) populate only one part in 10^10^123 of the available phase space volume.”  So even once you have laws roughly like ours, the odds that you’d get the force of the laws of physics being in the right range and early conditions of the universe be conducive to life is incredibly low—less than 1 in 10^10^123—that’s more than googolplex.  There’s also fine-tuning for the laws—delete any of the four fundamental laws of physics and no life could have arisen, as Robin Collins has shown.  So we lucked out by getting a set of fundamental laws with a zero percent prior probability, which exhibits complexity, fine-tuning for their strengths, and fine-tuning for the conditions of the universe. Theism is the only view that can explain that.  If you’re committed to atheism, this will be a deep mystery, one which goes away instantly if you embrace theism.  

The second great mystery is psychophysical harmony.  Theism best explains why the physical and the mental go together in harmonious ways.  Think about all the ways the physical could pair with the mental.  Here’s one way: every time any system has any integrated information, there’s a conscious experience that scales in intensity to the amount of integrated information.  That would be much simpler than the pairing in our universe but would produce none of the rich, complex, consciousnesses exhibited in our universe.  

By far the simplest ways that the physical could pair with the mental would have it produce nothing of value.  Then, even if you get the ability to think and have a complex inner life, it’s still a vast coincidence that it interacts with the world.  Epiphenomenalism, the view that consciousness is causally non-efficacious, is much simpler than consciousness interacting with the world—so it’s a vast coincidence that consciousness can affect the world, making me move my arm and move my lips to talk about consciousness.  Then, even after consciousness interacts with the world, it’s super improbable that it would pair in any harmonious way.  Every time consciousness affects the world there is some physical state—call it A—which is a state of the brain, and A will affect some mental state—call it B—which will be some conscious experience like a thought, and that will affect some physical state—call it C.  But you could switch out B with any other mental state and the world would be physically the same.  Evolution can’t explain this, because if B was replaced with some other mental states, our mental and physical lives would be in radical disharmony, but the world would be physically the same.  So then it’s a vast coincidence—why do the physical and the mental pair in such a harmonious way?  Let me be clear on what the three challenges are: 

1. Why are there complex conscious states at all?  The simplest pairings would produce nothing interesting of valuable, just very basic experience.  

2. Why does the mental interact with the physical?  

3. Why does it interact in a harmonious way so that, for instance, the thing that causes me to move my arm is my thought “I want my arm to move,” rather than some other mental state.  

Evolution can’t explain any of these things.  It can’t explain complex conscious states because that’s about the fundamental laws—trying to explain why there are physical states that can generate complex conscious states is a bit like trying to explain gravity by evolution.  For evolution to select for something it must be physically possible.  That’s also why 2 is not explained.  3 isn’t explained by evolution because a disharmonious world—where you behave the same way but your thoughts are different—would produce the same kind of selection.  Evolution cares about what you do, not what you think, and the puzzle here is explaining why what we think matches what we do.  

Similarly, even if you are a physicalist and think that the pairing between the mental and the physical is necessary, that doesn’t resolve the problem for the following reason.  Say that something is necessary doesn’t explain the puzzle of why it’s a certain way when there are a lot of other ways it could be.  If you ask me why I keep getting royal flushes in poker and I say “because it’s necessary” that’s a bad explanation.  But thinking that consciousness is necessarily caused by certain physical states doesn’t resolve the mystery—even if it’s necessary, it doesn’t explain why that, in particular, is necessary, whenthere are so many possible ways reality could be.  

The third mystery for the atheist is why we have a priori knowledge.  A priori knowledge is the kind of knowledge that you don’t get exclusively through sense experience.  For instance, I can know that torture is wrong even if I haven’t seen any torture.  Every view will have to believe in a priori knowledge because in order to justify induction—the view that the future will be like the past—you have to think that worlds where the future is like the past are more likely.  But that can’t be determined through sense experience.  Both the theory that the laws of physics will work the same way tomorrow and the theory that they won’t and instead the universe will be replaced with a cucumber make the same predictions about what we’ve already observed.  So if you think you’re justified in thinking the world won’t be replaced with a cucumber tomorrow, you need a priori knowledge.  

But how does atheism account for it?  Here’s a plausible principle: for you to have knowledge of A on the basis of B it must be that A explains why B happens and that A makes B more likely.  If, for instance, I think there’s a chair because I see one, but I know I’m hallucinating, then I’m not justified, because I’d see the chair even if there wasn’t one.  But this means that for us to be justified in having this a priori knowledge, they must explain why we have the intuitions about them.  

On a simple naturalistic account of reality, it can’t do that.  The fact that torture is wrong can’t move around atoms in your brain.  So therefore for you to have moral knowledge, your beliefs can’t just come from the physical behavior of the brain.  From this it follows that there must be a generic faculty by which we can grasp the truth about morality, metaphysics, and induction—but that’s super unlikely on atheism while naturally explained by theism.  

Let’s consider this applied to moral knowledge specifically, but as I say, it applies to all a priori knowledge.  If you have moral knowledge then the moral facts must explain your moral beliefs.  But moral facts can’t move atoms—the fact that torture is wrong can’t move atoms in your brain.  So then you must have some other way to know the moral facts by directly grasping them with your mind, but only theism explains that.  

My last great mystery is why I, in particular, exist.  Suppose that God exists.  Well, then we’d expect God to create every possible person.  God is maximally good and would do the best thing.  Creating someone is good if you can give them a good life—which God can do—so God would create all possible people.  This means that if theism is true, then it would be guaranteed that I’d exist.  

In contrast, if atheism is true, it’s very unlikely that you’d exist.  The number of possible people was shown to be Beth 2 by David Lewis—and I think it’s even more.  Beth 2 is a really big infinity.  No atheist—other than Lewis with his modal realism, and other spin-offs, all of which are very implausible—has ever had a view on which there are Beth 2 people that exist.  Even if the universe is infinitely big, even if there’s an infinite multiverse, that would still only have aleph null people, much less than Beth 2.  So then on atheism, only 0% of possible people would exist, which makes my existence in particular extremely improbable.  

Now I know what you’re thinking: where are all the people?  Well, I didn’t say God would make everyone in this universe.  My view is God would create every possible person and put them in the universe that’s best for their moral and spiritual development.  

Why think that the existence of more people is more likely?  Two reasons.  First, it follows from the straightforward probabilistic reasoning I gave before.  If there are more people, it’s likelier that I’d be one of them.  

Secondly, if you deny this, you get absurd results.  For instance, you get the result that the world will probably end soon, because if a universe with more people is no more likely to have me, while a universe with fewer people guarantees that I’d be earlier in the universe, then I should think the universe won’t last long.  This is called the doomsday argument and can be shown to follow from any view of anthropics that doesn’t say that more people existing is more likely.  

From this, one can get even crazier results.  Imagine Adam and Eve are in the garden and considering having sex.  They don’t know that they’re the first people.  So they think “if the first people have many offspring, it’s super unlikely that we’d be the first two people, because we could be any of the many offspring.”  Suddenly, God tells them that they’re the first two people.  Now, because they’re the first two people, and that’s unlikely if the first people have many offspring, they get good extremely strong evidence that that the first people will not have many offspring, and consequently that they won’t have many offspring.  Thus, they can be confident that, for instance, if God tells them he’ll make many offspring from them unless they get a royal flush in poker, that they’d get a royal flush because they’ve already gotten super strong evidence that they won’t have many offspring.  But clearly, this is crazy.  The fact that they’ll have lots of offspring unless they get some outcome in poker doesn’t make it likelier that they’ll get the outcome in poker.  If you buy this reasoning, then you’ll think that in such a scenario, Adam and Eve can avoid hunting by having sex unless a deer drops dead at their feet, and that because it’s so unlikely that they’ll have many offspring, probably a deer will drop dead at their feet.  But this is absurd! 

So the challenge is this: the arguments I’ve given show that one should think that every possible person gets created, because only that makes it likely that I, in particular, would get created.  If only a few billion or trillion or even a small infinity people get created, the odds I, in particular, would be created would be zero.  What is the atheistic view on which every possible person gets created?