For Theism: Part 2

Laws, anthropics, dualism, and priors

0 Introduction

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

—Psalm 19.

(Part 1 was here).

I’m not a theist. But unlike some people who aren’t theists, I don’t think that there’s no evidence for theism, nor do I think that the case against theism is a total slam-dunk. I think there is some very solid evidence for theism and much of it is largely unexplored. Here’s my effort to make the best case for theism that I can.

Before I get into the arguments, let me describe why I think most of the arguments for theism are not very good. These arguments include, but are not limited to, the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the contingency argument, the moral argument. I don’t think these provide no evidence, but I do not think that appealing to them as standalone arguments is worthwhile.

The problem with this deductive approach is that the evidence both for and against God is insanely strong. This is to be expected—when the relevant data is every fact in the universe, it’s no surprise that there would be lots of it that is expected on some hypothesis and lots more that is not expected on that hypothesis. These popular arguments are deductive in nature and rely on deeply contentious (and often false) premises. But when the relevant data is every fact in the universe, deductive arguments have little force; inductive arguments often invoke phenomena that are thousands of times more expected on one hypothesis than another—in contrast, one can never be especially certain about controversial claims about metaphysics. Given that nearly all sets of laws result in nothing interesting happening, the fact that the universe has interesting stuff happen is potentially millions or thousands of times more strongly predicted on theism—in contrast, there’s no shot that one can ever rationally be 99.9% confident that every premise of the Kalam is true.

It reminds me a bit of the ancient Greek attempt to deduce a priori facts about the world such as, in Aristotle’s case, the number of teeth women had (he got that wrong, btw). Maybe such arguments can give one weak reason to think something, but they are evidentially inferior to actually going out in the world, thinking hard, and looking at what things in the world are expected on theism.

I do not, however, think these arguments achieve nothing. They serve to establish that theism doesn’t have a vanishingly low prior probability. If you have some credence in some version of the contingency argument succeeding, for example, then this establishes theism has a not unreasonably low prior, which in combination with the abductive arguments can make a strong case for theism.

So . . . without further ado, here are several more reasons to think God exists.

1 Laws

The world that's around us is pretty amazing
But how does it work? It must be comp-l-icated
The secret is: The world can only work
When everything works together

—Bo Burnham in the song How the world works

Laws are very weird. In Maine, it’s illegal to advertise on tombstones (was this really a problem??), in Connecticut, only pickles that can bounce may be sold, and in Illinois it’s illegal to ride a bike in a way that is fancy (glad to see politicians focusing on the important problems). But there’s another sense in which laws are weird, which is that they exist at all, and this fact serves as an argument for theism.

Imagine that you observed that every time a person played poker, they got a royal flush. It would be reasonable to infer that this was explained by facts about them as an agent. From this, we can infer that providing agent-based explanations of regularities is a perfectly Kosher move. In contrast, the naturalist is left scratching their head for an explanation of such regularities.

The laws of physics rely on various regularities. We observe that there are various physical laws that govern the movement of simple particles, for instance. But these seem to cry out for explanation. Why is it that they do that? You can explain this in terms of their fundamental powers, for instance, or in terms of some mysterious “law” that compels them to do that. But this seems to cry out for explanation! Why is it that they have these powers?

I don’t think this is anything like a knockdown argument. But it is a relevant consideration! Naturalism posits at the fundamental level that there are particles that follow physical laws. But these laws are incredibly mysterious and bizarre—they invoke fundamental tendencies or something in the vicinity that seem to have no explanation. This is . . . very weird. Fundamental particles should read the room.

2 Priors

Tried absolution of the mind and soul
It only led me where I should not go
Oh and the answer well,
How could I miss
Something as simple as this?
Something as simple as this?

I've been falling crashing breaking
And all the while you were
Stood here waiting
For me …

—Jake Bugg, in the song Simple as this

In assessing some hypothesis, it’s worth considering the prior probability of the hypothesis. This is the odds of the hypothesis taken before assessing any of the evidence. So, for instance, in assessing whether I cheated in poker, you should start by seeing how likely I am to cheat in poker before assessing the odds that I’d get as lucky as I did if I cheated. If we know that I’m an amoral super genius who could figure out ingenious ways to cheat, such that there’s about a 50% chance that I’d cheat, this gives us good reason to think I cheated, if I get lucky a lot. In contrast, if I’m dull-witted and unfailingly scrupulous, it’s less likely that I cheated.

When one looks at the prior probability of theism, it’s unclear exactly how well it does. There are various ways to calculate prior probability—on some theism does great, and on others, it does badly. The prior probability of some hypothesis depends in large part on simplicity—the hypothesis that someone tripped is better than the hypothesis that someone tripped and another fell into a zoo and a third ran up the stairs, because it is simpler—it requires that fewer things happen. The problem is that there isn’t an agreed-upon way to evaluate simplicity. One view that is somewhat plausible is that simplicity depends on the length of a message required to mathematically describe some event. On this, theism doesn’t do that well.

Others say that it also has to do with the length of a message needed to describe an event, but that this message doesn’t just need to look at mathematical describability. Other views deny that there is any formula for calculating simplicity. And there are many more views.

I don’t know which of these is right. So the rational thing to do here is to split one’s credence between different ways of calculating prior probability. On some of these, theism is out, but on others, theism does really well. Taking this all into account, if, as I claim, theism has a sensible case for being intrinsically probable on some hypotheses, then theism will start with a reasonable prior probability—maybe 1%.

If this is true, then theism has an extremely good case for it. Given that, as I argued in the last article, on naturalism, almost certainly nothing of value would occur, it’s plausible that most of the epistemic landscape where stuff of value happens is occupied by theism. As long as theism starts with any reasonable prior, given the sequence of deeply improbable events required for value to occur, theism will be the best view. To reject that theism has a reasonable prior, one must be extremely confident in various deeply controversial claims about metaphysics, which one should not be confident in.

Okay, with that throat clearing out of the way, why think theism has a high prior? It has the following attractive features:

1. It might be necessary and follow from other things worth accepting. If theism follows from, for example, the contingency argument, the Kalam, any of Aquinas’s ways, any ontological argument, or any of the tons of other ways people have tried to argue that theism is necessary given that things exist, then it is necessary given that things exist. If there’s an n% probability that there’s a successful proof of X that appeals to things other than that which you’re updating on, then the prior probability of X must be at least n%. For instance, if you think there’s a 99% chance that there is a successful proof that there are infinite prime numbers, your prior in there being infinite primes must be at least 99%. So if you think there’s a 1% chance that the contingency argument of the ontological argument or the Kalam succeeds, then the prior of theism, given that things exist, must be at least 1%.

2. Theism is a very simple hypothesis. It claims that everything follows from a single, simple property—perfection. This is also an elegant model of reality—all that exists fundamentally being perfection is quite elegant, much like an elegant mathematical model.

3. Theism is widely believed by most people. This plausibly makes it not terribly improbable in terms of its prior probability. If you discovered that 90% of people got some answer to a math problem, for instance, that gives you some reason to not be super confident that that answer is wrong—so this should raise your prior. Nearly all beliefs as ubiquitous as theism are true—examples include that consciousness exists, pain is bad, it’s typically brighter in the day than the night, most people have two arms, dropping hammers on one’s foot is typically painful, and if you encounter a guy named Hannibal in a dark alley, run! This is especially so because many brilliant experts find theism probable including Dustin Crummett, Josh Rasmussen, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, Luke Barnes, Aaron Wall, Von Neumann (at the end of his life), the smartest person I’ve ever met whose name is Ethan, Laura Buchak, various other brilliant people I’ve met including a friend of my dad’s with a Ph.D in theology, David Bentley Hart, Isaac Newton, Francis Collins, Blaise Pascal, Eleanore Stump, and Eugene Wigner. With this impressive of a line-up supporting the view, you shouldn’t think theism has a prior probability of almost zero.

4. As Josh Rasmussen argues, limits seem to require explanation—the fact that the speed of light is limited seems to require explanation. Similarly, it seems like fundamental reality couldn’t be, for example, a cube, because a cube is limited—it has 4 sides and a certain shape. But why not 5? Or 6? Why is it the size it is? Because it is limited, it needs an explanation. But because God is unlimited, theism is the only model of reality on which there aren’t arbitrary limits, which makes it much more intrinsically probable.

5. Here’s a more moderate principle: limits on possibility require explanations. For there to be a limit on how fast light can go, that requires explanation. But if this is true, then a necessary unlimited being doesn’t require explanation. This can be made onto an argument:

6. Something requires an explanation iff it’s limited.

7. God isn’t limited

8. So God requires no explanation.

9. If something requires no explanation, it exists.

10. So God exists.

I think these should be enough to make theism have a somewhat reasonable prior.

3 Anthropics

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

—Colossians 1:16

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

—John 1:3

Behold, all souls are Mine;
The soul of the father
As well as the soul of the son is Mine;
The soul who sins shall die.

—Ezekiel 18:4

Suppose that theism is true. Plausibly, God would create all possible beings, because existence is a great good. So if God exists, the probability that I would exist would be 100%. In contrast, suppose that naturalism is true. There is some number of agents who will be created—suppose it’s 100 trillion. There are plausibly infinite possible agents, so conditional on only 100 trillion agents being created, the odds I’d be one of the lucky 100 trillion would be zero. Thus, the fact that I exist confirms theism over versions of naturalism according to which there are only finite worlds. The argument formalized is this:

1. If nontheism is true, there is some number N of agents.

2. If there are N agents, I wouldn’t exist, because the probability of me being one of the lucky N would be zero.

3. I do exist.

4. So nontheism is false.

There’s only one nontheistic view I can think of on which all agents might exist. That view is modal realism. But modal realism undermines induction and is thus false.

You could object by supposing that naturalism is true but there are infinite agents. This has four problems:

1. For every possible being to be created, there must be souls. If there are not souls and identity depends on some other features, then you could always multiply those features, meaning that 0% of possible agents would be made—for every actually existing agent, you could make an infinite number of copies. But only theism naturally predicts the soul theory.

2. This means naturalism has to invoke an infinite multiverse to have any shot at being true. But this is very improbable on naturalism—you wouldn’t expect infinite agents on naturalism.

3. There are uncountably infinite possible agents, on account of there being uncountably infinite possible worlds filled with agents. Given that uncountable infinites are an infinite number of times greater than countable infinites, conditional on naturalism + the number of actually existing agents being infinite, there would still be be a 0% chance that I would exist. But I do exist (surprise!), so theism is confirmed.

4. Even if I exist sometimes, theism predicts that I would exist now. Suppose that there is an infinite future. The odds I’d exist now, of all the possible times I could exist, would be zero. In contrast, theism predicts I’d have an immortal soul, so the odds I’d exist now would be much higher. One can avoid this by accepting reincarnation, but this is an ad hoc assumption on naturalism and would still provide evidence for theism, because one would only be around for a short slice of history on naturalism. In contrast, theism predicts one would be around continuously.

You might worry that this kind of anthropic argument is illicit. But it’s no different from the fine-tuning argument, which is, as was argued in the last article, no different from the firing squad case. It points out a phenomenon—my existence—which is plausible on theism and implausible on naturalism. This is no more illicit than claiming that fine-tuning is more strongly predicted on theism than on naturalism.

4 Mid-level psychophysical harmony

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

—Genesis 2:7

Plausibly, consciousness first arose in the world through biological life. Atoms are not conscious, nor are stars, nor are planets—it is only biological life that experiences anything. In addition, as I’ve argued elsewhere, consciousness is fundamental—it is not reducible to mere behavior. For one to write the laws that fully describe the universe, they would have to make explicit reference to consciousness, unlike, for example, chairs. Chairs fall out of facts about atoms—consciousness does not.

Suppose we grant this. This makes the naturalistic picture extremely odd. On it, there are fundamental consciousness-involving laws that, unlike every single other fundamental law, each of which applies to the simplest physical constituents, instead applies to biological life—machines of great complexity. This is an oddly disjointed picture of reality, on which the fundamental psychophysical laws are utterly unlike the fundamental physical laws.

On such a picture, these psychophysical laws sat around for nearly 14 billion years doing nothing, until eventually something to which they applied arose. These laws also happened, coincidentally, to be the only thing that brings value to the universe.

The theist has a very good account of this. The world was made for conscious beings like us, with us in mind. On such a picture, it’s quite probable that there would be explicit higher-order laws that give rise to us. To see this, suppose that you hear a description of a possible world and you’re trying to figure if it was a work of fiction. You hear that there are fundamental laws that make reference to agents—like in Harry Potter—where there are fundamental laws linking the production of sounds and mental states to the emergence of physical effects. This gives good reason to think it is fiction—that it was designed. For if it is fiction, the fundamental rules don’t have to be simple, and the laws can be disjointed—for the laws are just a side-show that enables the creation of agents. If some system was written with the production of some particular good in mind, then that good doesn’t need to arise out of more fundamental features of the system.

Just as discovering that humans were the center of the universe would have given evidence for theism, so too does discovering the laws of the universe had us in mind—that we are the only thing in the universe not describable by simpler mathematical properties—gives us good reason to think that the universe was made with us in mind.

Here, I’ve laid out the main thrust of my case for theism. There are more facts favoring theism, however, that required me to read several books, so the next section in this series will be defensive in nature. I’ll argue against the main arguments for atheism—at least evil and hiddenness. Stay tuned!