God Best Explains The World

Theism is like evolution

0 Defending the approach

There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t.

— John von Neumann

The unfortunate task of the creationist is explaining an old world as if it is young, a world with biological life shaped by evolutionary forces without invoking evolution. The creationist’s error is not minor; they believe that the forces that were most fundamental inshaping the world are not real, and must invent implausible, gerrymandered explanations of many features of the world. The creationist’s worldview is implausible on two fronts; there are both things that their theory wholly fails to explain without utterly absurd stipulations, like the universal genetic code, and there are so many things that their view explains poorly, that it makes terrible sense of the world.

The implausibility of creationism doesn’t just come from the things that the creationists are totally unable to explain, though there are many things like that. It comes from the fact that evolution naturally explains almost everything in biology, so creationists are reduced to ad hoc stipulations to explain hundreds of different biological features.

The creationist is not special in this regard. One who tried to explain the features of a car without invoking design would be in for mammoth explanatory inadequacy, for there are so many features of a car that make no sense except in light of design. While believing in design won’t necessarily clear up all the mysteries—perhaps one still wonders why features of the car are set up a certain way, especially if they’re not a mechanic—it vastly reduces the mystery of the car.

I claim that the atheist is in a rather similar situation. The atheist denies the existence of the fundamental cause of all things—as a result, the implausibility of atheism comes in two forms. The first is simply the fact that there are some phenomena that atheism has no remotely plausible explanation of, that are so puzzling on an atheistic worldview that they single-handedly provide substantial reason to abandon atheism. The second is that, even if the atheist can explain lots of specific features of the world without invoking God, there are so many features of the world that are better explained by theism that atheism’s inability to explain them cumulatively costs them dearly. Just as the young earth creationist is left scrambling to explain dozens of separate features of biology, so too is the atheist left scrambling to explain dozens of separate features of the world.

Many theists are doubtful of this approach. Ed Feser, for example, worries about ‘arguments that treat God’s existence as at best the most probable “hypothesis” among others that might account for such-and-such empirical evidence’ on the grounds that they ‘fail to get to God, strictly speaking, as opposed to a “designer” of some possibly finite sort.’ This seems like a spurious critique—even if each particular argument is consistent with several different theories, the view that best makes sense of all the features of the world is theism. This is like worrying about advancing arguments for an old Earth, in support of arguing for evolution, on the grounds that they don’t prove evolution beyond an old Earth. While this is true, establishing that the Earth is old enough to sustain robust evolution is a key ingredient in any case for evolution, particularly because it rules out the most popular alternative to evolution, that being young earth creationism. An argument like fine-tuning that points to a designer (and, as I’ve argued, a perfect being specifically) is perfectly kosher.

Feser also worries that these arguments, ‘are distractions from the more powerful arguments of traditional metaphysics, and thus can make the grounds for natural theology seem weaker than they really are.’ This is an area of substantive disagreement that I cannot explore in any detail in this post, beyond arguing that the abductive arguments for theism are quite good. I find Feser’s arguments almost maximally unconvincing, ranging from employing premises I’m confident are false to employing premises that might very well be true, but lack strong reasons to accept them (I mostly agree with what Joe Schmid says about these arguments in his excellent book).

It would be quite a shock if these abductive arguments were not good, if Feser is correct. The ultimate explanation of the world should best explain many features of the world, just as the ultimate explanation of biological life (abiogenesis+evolution) should best explain many features of biology. It would be an unparalleled miracle if almost no features of reality convincingly evidentially support the true theory of ultimate reality—particularly when that theory is radically different from alternatives. It’s not hard to get a priori arguments for evolution—it follows trivially from the existence of different genes affecting one’s chances of survival—but nonetheless, when arguing for it, one should note that it best explains the world.

Before I present the case, I’ll address just one more line of criticism. People are often suspicious of the idea that theism can be confirmed by explaining things we already know rather than predicting future phenomena. But this is how almost all explanation works. The reason to believe in dark matter—an invisible, undetectable entity—is that it explains things we do observe like the gravity exerted in certain regions in space. If we’d discovered the evidence for dark matter before formulating the theory, it would still make sense to believe in dark matter.

The methodology people often employ, according to which evidence for God must come in the form of advanced predictions rather than explaining past evidence would rule out much of our knowledge. It would rule out almost all historical inquiry which virtually never proceeds by making predictions in advance. No one predicted, in advance, the evidence confirming the existence of Julius Caesar. One of the main pieces of support for the theory of continental drift came from the fact that it explained something we’d observed—namely, similar fauna between Africa and South America during the time they were thought to have broken apart. When one concludes that a criminal committed a crime based on certain evidence, they almost never make advanced predictions, but instead conclude the criminal committed the crime because it explains certain things they’ve already observed—testimony, for example. Why should God be any different?

This methodology would even throw physics into jeopardy. Physicists see it as a major advantage of a theory if it provides a deeper explanation of the laws we know about with fewer entities. This is what they’ve been looking for in a theory of everything! If one doesn’t take explaining exceptionless laws that we know about to be an advantage of a theory, the entire subfield involved in constructing theories of everything is a farce.

Finally, such a method is clearly unworkable in the case of theism. If from the beginning of the world, the sky had spelled out “made by God,” that would provide significant evidence for the existence of God, even though it wouldn’t be an advanced prediction.

A final worry people have about these arguments is that the things theism best explains are things that are required for us to exist. One might think that a precondition for creatures like us can’t be evidence for a theory, because if it hadn’t existed, we wouldn’t be around to notice it. But this is silly reasoning on several fronts:

1. It doesn’t follow from the fact that had something not existed we wouldn’t exist that the thing existing can’t be evidence for some proposition. While people assert this strange method of anthropic reasoning as if its a platitude, it doesn’t follow logically.

2. Imagine a firing squad of 100 people all shoot their guns at you, but their guns all jam. It’s true that had they not jammed, you wouldn’t be around to observe it. Nonetheless, that they jammed is evidence that, for example, someone is conspiring to protect you, or someone paid off the firing squad.

3. From the fact that you exist, you get evidence your parents didn’t use effective contraception in the sex act that conceived you. But if you hadn’t existed, you wouldn’t have been around to observe it. Thus, if this anthropic reasoning were correct, we’d be unable to say that your existence gives you evidence that your parents didn’t use effective contraception.

1 The prior probability of theism

Ain't no need to complicate it
We both know that's overrated
We've been there, it's safe to say it ain't our style
We're just simple like a six string
The way this world was meant to be
Like laughin' love, make a lot out of a little

“Simple,” Florida Georgia Line.

(This section will be mostly repeating points I’ve made here, so if you’ve already read that article, feel free to skip this section).

Evaluating a theory requires doing two things: first, you look at the prior probability of a theory, meaning how probable it is before you consider the evidence. Second, you look at its explanation of the evidence. For example, the theory that a leprechaun is writing this article and has a writing style exactly like mine (clear, succinct, excellent, all while being humble and understated) explains this article just as well as the theory that I wrote it, but it has a lower prior probability, so you shouldn’t believe it.

The prior probability of a theory depends mostly on how simple and how elegant the theory is. The simplicity of a theory has to do with the minimal description length of the fundamental entities invoked by the theory—namely, how many bits of information it would take to specify what the theory takes to exist without deeper explanation.

The version of theism I intend to defend—namely, the notion that there’s a perfect being—does quite well on these criteria. It’s quite simple, positing just one fundamental thing that is quite simple to describe; a being of unlimited goodness. There are also about 9 other ways to simply describe theism, including the thesis that there’s an omnipotent being, that there’s an unlimited agent, and that there’s an unlimited mind—all the while only invoking fundamental entities, but I’ll focus primarily on the goodness route. Goodness is fundamental—to say something is good is not to describe any physical facts about it, like its size, weight, or shape—and so theism is simply the theory that fundamental reality is a being of unlimited goodness. This is quite trivial to describe—"there exists a being of unlimited goodness.”

There are some things that are easy to describe in English but aren’t simple. For example, we have a word for refrigerators, even though they’re complex—composed of parts. In an ideal language, refrigerators would be tricky to describe in just a word. But one can explain God simply by invoking fundamental entities—which must be included brutely in an ideal language—in unlimited quantities. Theism is, therefore, incredibly simple.

Second, theism is quite elegant. Elegance has to do with the non-arbitrariness of a theory and whether the parts fit together. Positing goodness at the base of reality is quite unified and elegant. This is especially so when goodness as the base of reality is unlimited.

Furthermore, theism is extremely non-arbitrary. Theism posits that there are no arbitrary limits—that the fundamental thing has just one core unlimited property. That’s a better theory than that there are fundamental forces with arbitrarily limited mathematical properties (if non-theism is true, and S describes the fundamental laws, why do the fundamental physical things follow S rather than one of the other similar mathematical structures)?

Positing that fundamental reality is unlimited is far better than positing the existence of some arbitrary limit. The theory that the world is unlimited in size is far better than the theory that it is exactly 84927389247302897589106534178563127894638279 meters across. The theory that the laws of physics are uniform and work the same way across the entire universe is much better than the theory that there’s some patch somewhere where the laws of physics break down.

The lesson of this is that even though there are an infinite number of theories according to which the laws of the universe break down in some specific patch, those theories collectively have less probability than the theory that they’re uniform. A bit of extra complexity and arbitrariness massively lowers the probability of a theory. But because theism is far more simple and non-arbitrary, it starts out far ahead of naturalism in terms of prior probability. Theism starts out at least as far ahead of naturalism as the theory that there are uniform laws starts out ahead of the theory that there’s a patch with different physical laws—it lacks at least one extra arbitrary limit. Because the patch theory starts out extremely far behind the theory that there’s no patch, theism starts out extremely far ahead of naturalism.

Now, all of this stuff about simplicity gets complicated. It hinges on tricky philosophical evaluations, and while I think the case is strong that God is simple, it’s hard to be sure. When one is unsure about the prior of a theory, they should mostly look at the evidence—it would be foolish for a creationist to think evolution has a super low prior and then neglect the evidence, for example. So while I think that theism has a major edge based on priors, its prior should at least not be disqualifying.

2 Stuff exists, and that stuff is governed by laws

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all 'round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me

—"In The Aeroplane Over The Sea,” Neutral Milk Hotel

The world has stuff and that stuff does stuff. This is generally regarded as unremarkable. But I think theism makes much better sense of this cluster of facts. After starting out ahead of naturalism, theism best explains the things naturalism takes to be fundamental—particles and laws.

First of all, something exists rather than nothing. Why is this? Many argue that theism has a uniquely good explanation of this deep mystery—one often regarded to be one of the greatest puzzles in the universe. This argument, that theism explains why there’s something rather than nothing, comes in the form of various cosmological arguments—most notably the contingency argument. I’m not totally sure if this argument succeeds, though I think there’s a strong case that can be made for it, but seeing as naturalism has no plausible explanation of existence—there’s no remotely convincing story of why particles and laws might be necessary—it favors theism.

I’ll try to summarize the version of the argument I find most convincing. It starts with the idea that everything has an explanation. Not only is this a necessity for making sense of the world and doing science—it wouldn’t do to simply suggest, when presented with a puzzling phenomenon, that it just exists for no deeper reason. A theory that says that the fundamental things exist for no reason is much worse than a theory that explains why they exist. Explaining things is a virtue.

We take the things in our experience to have an explanation. But what could justify taking them to have an explanation without thinking that everything must have an explanation? If things can exist without explanations, why should we expect, say, tables and chairs to have explanations. Now, you might say only certain kinds of things need explanations—perhaps things in time—but it’s hard to think of what that thing might be. If time ends, it would be bizarre to think a chair could subsequently pop into being for no reason!

From this, we learn that there must be something that exists necessarily—that can’t be otherwise—that explains the world. Now, we must inquire about its properties. I think we have three lines of arguments—none of which are completely demonstrative, but each of which are decently convincing—to support this being God.

First of all, it seems like this thing can’t be fundamentally limited. The fundamental, necessary thing can’t just be, say, dirt or a basketball. This is because those things are crucially limited. Nothing limited, whether in size or shape, can be fundamental, for the limit would need to be explained, but there’s nothing that could explain it (there’s nothing beyond this necessary foundation to limit it). Now, while maybe fundamental reality could be unlimited without being God—say, by being a vast assemblage of every possible world—this lends significant support to the existence of God by ruling out most non-God alternatives. Naturalism, positing fundamentally physical things with limited physical properties, certainly implies the existence of unexplained limits, which can’t be features, arguably, of the necessary thing.

Second, I think we can see that this first thing must be all-powerful. Let’s call the necessary thing S. S must be able to bring about any possible world, for if S couldn’t, then nothing could (there’s nothing other than S that exists necessarily that could bring it about, and any contingent thing must depend on S, for if its contingent, there must be something necessary to bring it about). But a being that’s able to bring about any possible world is simply an omnipotent being—that’s pretty much the definition of omnipotence, being able to bring about any possible world.

This is a pretty abstract point that’s hard to understand (and explain!). Let’s see it applied to a concrete example. Suppose that, like atheist philosopher Graham Oppy, you think the necessary thing is some physical state governed by certain laws. Well then other laws—like, say, Newtonian laws—will be impossible. There’s no possible way those laws could exist, because they differ from the necessary laws. But this means that on every view other than theism, many things that sure seem possible—like Newtonian laws—are actually impossible. Only a being that can create all possible worlds doesn’t objectionable shrink the modal realm.

Third, God is the only thing that might be necessary. While there’s no plausible story about why, say, certain laws or physical things would be necessary, there are many different accounts of why God might be necessary. These accounts range from the success of the Godelian ontological argument, to God’s essence being his existence, to Gustafsson’s ontological argument, to many arguments. Thus, if we conclude that something must be necessary, because there are many different arguments that might establish God’s necessity—some of which are decently promising—we should think God is the best candidate for something being necessary.

So God’s existence arguably provides a better explanation of why anything exists at all, of why reality is not a barren void, but actually contains things! But beyond that, it explains the specific things it contains.

The world has physical things. God explains why these physical things would exist—while theism doesn’t directly entail physical things would exist (maybe an idealist world would be just as good), it makes it not terribly unlikely, as having creatures with bodies that can influence each other opens up the possibility of many great goods. Thus, theism can explain the existence of a physical universe with decent probability. Naturalism, in contrast, has no explanation—it just has to posit it as brute.

Suppose we think the contingency reasoning I employed fails, and that theism has no good explanation of why anything exists at all. Theism, at this point, has to posit just one fundamental thing, and naturalism has to posit one fundamental thing. I think they’re maybe symmetrical—theism leaves God unexplained, naturalism leaves the physical world unexplained.

So now let’s see which better explains the rest of the world.

Once we have a physical world, naturalism gives no special reason to expect there to be laws. Theism, in contrast, gives us strong reason to expect that—a limp, lawless, and impotent world that does nothing has no value. A perfect God would only make physical things in the service of creating agents. For this reason, if he makes physical things, he’s as good as guaranteed to make laws. So theism makes it much, much likelier that there would be laws than atheism.

This becomes clearer when one the what a law is and how weird it is that laws exist. There are basically three accounts of laws. The first—the Humean account—says that laws are just descriptions of the way stuff behaves. On this account, the law of gravity isn’t why things attract according to the inverse square law, but simply is description of the fact that things attract according to the inverse square law. I find humeanism crazy—among other things, it implies that there is no fact of the matter about the laws governing scenarios the universe will never be in, for the laws are just a summary of the way things behave. But under humeanism, particles behave in accordance with certain simple patterns for absolutely no further reasons—they just do. While the theist can explain laws in terms of the will of God, the atheist Humean must posit that the particles simply dance for no reason.

A second popular view of laws is called the powers view. On this picture, laws describe the power of physical things. Saying there’s a law of gravity simply says that particles have the power to attract other particles. On this picture, however, the powers of the fundamental things are unexplained—once one posits that there’s physical stuff, the atheist has no reason to posit that the physical things would have any powers at all, and strong reason—based on parsimony—to think they wouldn’t have powers. The fact that the basic physical things have powers is a miracle!

The third popular view of laws is called a governing view. On this picture, laws are extra things that govern the physical objects. Saying there’s a law of gravity just means that there’s some extra force that governs the way the physical things behave. But on this picture, this extra force is quite mysterious—naturalism gives no reason to expect there to be such a force.

But theism isn’t done explaining things, as the fact that there are 10 billion remaining words in this article should indicate. Even after we have laws of some sort, theism best explains why the laws apply to the stuff that exists. On naturalism, it’s utterly mysterious that the laws apply to the physical stuff. To see this, let’s consider the three main views of laws.

According to the governing views of laws, according to which laws are extra rules that govern how things behave, it’s utterly mysterious that the laws line up with the things that exist. Suppose at the most fundamental level we discover that the universe is filled with As. Well, it’s quite mysterious that the laws apply to As—why don’t they apply to Bs or Cs or Ds or any of the other infinite physical structures. Of course, you could posit that they apply to all those other things, but that would be less parsimonious and fits poorly with what the laws seem to be (they don’t seem to apply to all conceivable physical structures).

On the powers view, laws describe the powers things have. But then it’s quite mysterious why the physical things have the powers to interact with other things that exist. Why do bosons have the power to interact with fermions rather than X’s, where X’s are some type of fundamental particle that doesn’t exist. It’s quite thoroughly surprising that the fundamental things have the powers to interact with other things that happen to exist, rather than one of the infinitely many nonexistent things.

The final major view of laws is the Humean view, according to which the laws simply describe the way things behave under certain conditions. But this has the same problem as the powers view of laws. The laws will describe the conditions under which things that exist interact with other things that exist. But it’s hugely coincidental that the conditions under which the things that exist interact arise at all—it could be that the particles sit there doing nothing because they only produce causal interactions with Fs and there are no Fs.

Section recap: Theism posits either zero explained fundamental things (if the contingency argument works) or one unexplained thing. This thing is very simple—just a single perfect being, a being of unlimited goodness. In contrast, naturalism must posit as brute:

—physical stuff exists

—there are laws

—the laws apply to the physical stuff that exists.

Theism has a chance of clearing up one of the greatest mysteries of the world—why there is something rather than nothing. Atheism has no hope of eliminating that mystery, and must unsatisfactorily answer the question of why anything exists at all with either “because there must be (for no deeper reason),” or “there just is.” The existence of the universe, the presence of laws, and the applicability of laws, therefore, all support theism.

3 Other things about the physical world that theism explains

We'll compare our stories
Our trials and our glories
I hope mine's not boring

—"Anna Muse,” Felix Rabito.

So far I’ve argued (read conclusively established) that theism has a high prior probability and best explains the existence of a physical world, the presence of laws, and the fact that those laws apply to the physical world. Something as simple and unremarkable as the presence of applicable laws makes little sense on naturalism, but quite a lot of sense under theism. Just as the creationist struggles to explain mundane biological facts, like the fact that so much of human behavior seems geared towards procreation, the atheist struggles to explain mundane facts about the world.

Beyond this, theism explains the presence of interesting and valuable laws. On naturalism, even once physical stuff exists, the laws exist, and the laws apply to the stuff that exists, there’s no guarantee that the physical stuff would do anything interesting. In fact, given that simpler laws are more likely than complicated ones—one who doubts that has no grounds on which to declare it’s unlikely that there are some complicated laws that will make the universe malfunction one second from now—we should expect, on naturalism, that the laws will almost certainly be one of the simplest kinds.

But the simplest laws are boring! The simplest laws just make particles move in a circle, or in a line, or in a triangle shape. Producing a complex and valuable physical world filled with rich structures requires we hit the cosmic jackpot, and get one of the very few—and generally more complicated—laws that produces something interesting! There are infinite laws simpler than ours!

It’s especially surprising that we hit the jackpot on the constants to such an extreme degree. If many of the constants differed by just a tiny amount—on the order of 1 part in 10^120 of the possible range of their values—no complex structures would form. Theism explains this while atheism doesn’t—on atheism, the cosmological constant being a value that gives rise to life is no more likely than it being one of the other values that doesn’t. I won’t elaborate too much on these points about theism better explaining the fact that the laws produce interesting things, because I’ve already written about 5,000 words about it, and this article is much too long! But if you want to read me elaborate on the point and respond to objections, check that article out. It is surprising both that we happened to get laws that produce something interesting and that the constants are finely-tuned—fragile in the sense that if they were slightly different, nothing interesting would arise.

Theism also explains why the bits of the physical world interact. This requires the following 7 things go right (quoting this article of mine):

1. Even if things are broadly in the business of interacting with each other, there are certain conditions that have to apply. But most ways reality could be, they wouldn’t apply. Things only interact under certain conditions, but that means there are an infinite number of conditions under which they don’t apply. For example, you could have all the physical stuff really far apart so that it doesn’t interact. And that doesn’t seem much less intrinsically probable—it doesn’t compromise simplicity. Similarly, you could have there be other stuff that interferes with the interactions—potentially an infinite number of things could do that.

2. Even if the stuff that exists is broadly in the business of interacting, it has to be in the same spacetime region. That’s not guaranteed—you could have things occur in their own isolated spacetimes—distinct from each other the way David Lewis’s worlds are distinct. Them being in the same world is no simpler and so it’s pretty unlikely.

3. For stuff to interact in any way which brings about anything interesting there has to be time. Otherwise, everything would be static. Furthermore, things have to have interactions that play out across time.

4. The stuff has to be all of a similar kind to interact. You might have, for instance, disembodied minds, weird mathematical laws that do stuff, and then also have physical composites. One of the worries of the many worlds interpretation is that something as abstruse and mathematical as a wave function can’t explain the real physical stuff of our experience—you could have a world like that where there are abstruse mathematical laws but they don’t build up to anything concrete.

5. The stuff all has to be capable of interacting with other things. But surely it’s simpler for it to just follow its own plan—for instance, particles that move around in a circle whatever the other particles do.

6. Then, even when the stuff interacts, it has to be able to bind together in stable ways. If particles just bounced off each other but didn’t form more complicated composites, nothing interesting would happen.

7. For the stuff to interact, there also has to be space. Now, space might be necessary, but if not, it’s another thing needed for reality to hang together.

While this point sounds weird, once one seriously considers how much had to go right for things to interact, it becomes quite clear how lucky we are that we have a physical world of interacting objects. Theism makes sense of all these things, atheism doesn’t.

Even once the world has particles bopping and bouncing around, forming complex structures, theism best explains why they’d give rise to life. Even given evolution, it’s nowhere near guaranteed that a life-permitting universe would give rise to complex, embodied life like us. First of all, you need abiogenesis, and while it’s not clear exactly what the probability is of that on naturalism, it’s much higher on theism once we conditionalize on the things we’ve discussed so far (a life permitting universe with orderly laws), for on theism, these things were made in pursuit of creating valuable creatures.

Even aside from abiogenesis, theism best explains why there is a process like evolution that gives rise to life. Naturalism doesn’t guarantee that there would be such a mechanism, but theism predicts that God would make sure life arises some way. Additionally, theism makes it more likely that complex, intelligent life like us would arise, rather than simply polyps, prokaryotes, or plants (those have either no value or virtually no value). Now, while I think creationists are wrong to claim that there’s some reason, in principle, why evolution couldn’t produce humans, it’s certainly not guaranteed to (it took billions of years to get humans, so it can’t be guaranteed).

Section recap: theism best explains:

—finely-tuned constants

—the presence of laws that produce interesting things

—the many conditions (e.g. the existence of time, stuff being able to bind in more complex structures) that are required for important interactions.

—the presence of biological life both existing and going through the many steps needed to reach us.

4 Consciousness

I act like you act,

I do what you do

But I don't know, what it's like to be you

What consciousness is, I ain't got a clue

I got the zombie blues.

—"Zombie Blues,” David Chalmers.

So far, we’ve considered the probability of there being a world that gives rise to embodied life on theism vs naturalism, and argued that there are about a dozen bits of this that are best explained by theism. But the world doesn’t just have bodies and particles and laws—it has consciousness.

We each have conscious experience—a rich inner movie playing inside of our skulls. We don’t just behave—we experience. The world is filled with colors, shapes, and feels that somehow get produced by the fleshy stuff in our skulls.

This makes perfect sense in a theistic world. God has no use for mindless, valueless automata, wholly lacking in experience. The reason to make the world is primarily so as to create valuable, conscious creatures! A theist would antecedently expect the bipedal apes on Earth to have experiences.

On naturalism, no such expectation is present. Even if you think that consciousness is just physical—a position which I believe is almost certainly false—it still is a bit surprising that physical things of a certain complexity simply turn conscious. An atheist would have no reason to expect this to be the case, and yet it is—just another fact better explained by theism.

Now, while the atheist physicalist claims that certain physical arrangements necessarily produce consciousness, something can be necessary on a theory and yet still surprising. If As necessarily produce B on some theory, yet we have no idea how they’d do that, while a second theory says that ingredient C in combination with A produces B, and it makes intuitive sense that C and A would produce B, the second theory has a better explanation of B. By this logic, even if the atheist posits that consciousness is necessarily physical, the mystery does not go away.

Imagine worldview comparison as akin to a game. Imagine, if we’re comparing theories 1 and 2, that a person who believes each of the theories is trying to guess what the world would be like. Whoever correctly guesses more stuff, with greater probability, wins. The theist would have correctly guessed, unlike the atheist, the existence of a physical world, the presence of laws, the applicability of the laws, the fact they produce a complex world, the presence of finely-tuned constants, and the existence of biological life. But even after we know all this, the atheist has no reason to expect brains to generate consciousness—the atheist would thus predict a zombie world, devoid of consciousness, while the theist would predict the presence of consciousness. The theist, in this matter, as in many, would be right.

Even after the world has certain physical states that lead to consciousness, theism, more than naturalism, predicts that those physical states would arise. Brains being conscious doesn’t do any good if there aren’t any brains! Theism predicts that once you have physical things that lead to consciousness, those physical things would exist—naturalism doesn’t.

Think of this as analogous to cooking a dish. Consciousness is like the dish. To make a dish, there have to be possible ingredients that together make the dish, and you have to have those ingredients. Similarly, to have conscious agents, you need certain physical states to generate consciousness, and for those physical states to exist. Theism predicts both of those things, naturalism doesn’t.

On top of this, theism best explains the harmony between the mental and the physical. This is an argument that is hard to do justice to concisely, but I think is one of the top ~3ish arguments for theism—so I’ll just give a quick summary and link to some helpful resources (see here, here, here, here, and here for helpful standalone pieces on the argument, and here if you want a 38 part series of cute, animated videos on psychophysical harmony). The argument is accepted by lots of extremely smart people, so if you find yourself thinking that it’s obviously stupid, probably you are the one who is confused.

The mental pairs with the physical in a way that is harmonious. When I want my arm to go up, it goes up. My mental model of reality roughly matches the way reality actually is. The table in front of me is, in reality, several feet, and I see it as being several feet. When I’m in pain, I act to avoid that pain.

But this harmony isn’t guaranteed. There are many conceivable ways the mental and the physical could have paired that would have produced radical disharmony. For example, one very simple pairing would be that one has an experience seeing a red wall—with its redness proportional to the amount of integrated information in a brain. This is much simpler than the pairings in our world and would produce nothing of value.

Alternatively, one could have an inverted world, where we the agents feel pain when we feel pleasure and pleasure when we feel pain. They act to get the painful stuff rather than the pleasurable stuff. Even as they think “this sucks, I’d like to get less of it,” they act to get more of it.

In consciousness, there are three states. There’s some physical state A—a state of the brain—that gives rise to some mental state B, that gives rise to some physical state C, like one moving their arm. But as long as you keep A and C the same, you could switch out B with D or E or F or G or H or any of infinitely many other states, and we’d act the same, but our mental life would be radically disharmonious. Rather than moving our arm when we want to move it, instead we’d have the experience of eating tuna or being tortured, and then we’d move our arm.

This argument is very tricky to get your head around and is enough to almost singlehandedly refute atheism. However, it requires quite deep, careful thought to really understand. I won’t address it in too much detail, but let me just clear up two misunderstandings.

A first worry one might have is that evolution solves this problem. If our mental states were disharmonious, they claim, we’d die. But this misunderstands the problem—in the world I describe, where you switch out B with C or D or E or F, we’d act exactly the same way. Evolution doesn’t care if our mental states and physical states are harmoniously paired—it only cares how we act, so there’d be no selection for harmonious mental states.

A second worry one might have is that this argument assumes dualism. I’ve been talking a lot about ways the world could be with different pairings between the mental and the physical. But, claims the physicalist, this is actually impossible—the mental and the physical couldn’t pair in any way other than how they actually do.

But when evaluating probabilities, one should take into account epistemic probabilities—how likely something would be evaluated to be on different theories—rather than metaphysical possibility, which relates to whether something could actually happen. Necessitarians think that everything that happens is necessary. If a necessitarian got 100 royal flushes in poker, it wouldn’t do for them to simply declare it necessary as if that made the puzzle evaporate. It’s unlikely that that would be necessary, rather than one of the other many options. Declaring something necessary is not an explanation.

Here’s another way to see this: imagine that everyone had, in their visual field, the words “made by God” constantly. It wouldn’t do to say that on physicalism, this is necessary, so it doesn’t need explanation, and isn’t evidence for God. It’s unlikely that would be necessary, when there are so many other more likely options. But then positing that harmony is necessary doesn’t make the mystery go away.

Section recap: Theism best explains

—that certain physical states give rise to consciousness.

—that those physical states exist.

—that those physical states pair harmoniously with the mental states.

5 Miscellaneous

I was just guessing at numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
But tell me you love me, come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start

—"The Scientist" Coldplay

There are many more points of data that don’t seem to fit well into any of the aforementioned categories. The diversity of the evidence is quite overwhelming; we have many different converging lines of evidence, from about a dozen sources, all pointing towards the same conclusion. This is the sort of case we get for true theories, like evolution, or the documentary hypothesis, but rarely for false theories.

Chief among these data points is the fact that you exist. I’ve written an extremely long and detailed article defending this argument, so here I’ll give only the briefest of sketches. I will note, however, that I regard this argument to be one of the most convincing arguments for God—definitely one of the top 3 arguments, those being this one, psychophysical harmony, and fine-tuning.

You existing is more likely if there are more people that exist. If there are 500 people that exist, it’s 500 times likelier you’d exist than if there is just one person that exists. But this means your existence is infinitely likelier if infinite people exist—so you should think infinite people exist.

But it doesn’t stop there. Some infinites are bigger than others. Therefore, you get infinitely strong evidence that the number of people that exists is the most that there could be. The number of people that could exist is at least Beth 2—that’s a very large infinity, more than the number of numbers. Even if the universe is infinitely large, it would only have Beth 0 people, far less than Beth 2.

So, from the fact that you exist, you get infinitely strong evidence that Beth 2 people exist at least—that there’s a vast multiverse, filled with people. But theism is the best explanation of that fact! God would have a reason to create all possible people and give them all great lives—or, perhaps not everyone, but at least Beth 2 people. So then the fact that you exist gives you absurdly strong evidence for the existence of Beth 2 people, which is best explained by theism. On atheism, there’s no reason to think Beth 2 people would exist, the number of atheists who have endorsed theories on which there’d be Beth 2 people is in the double digits, and almost certainly, any atheistic view that has Beth 2 people will undermine induction. Atheism, while not strictly incompatible with there being Beth 2 people, makes their presence vanishingly unlikely; theism, in contrast, naturally predicts the presence of Beth 2 people.

Beyond this fact, there is our ability to have knowledge about things not directly related to the physical world. Like with the previous argument, I have a lengthy article discussing it, so I won’t go into too much detail (this post is 7,000 words already, and counting).

I claim that we have a special non-physical faculty of intuition that enables us to grasp the truth about things not related to the physical world, and that this faculty is not physical in nature.

The argument for this begins with a simple premise: if the reason you believe something has nothing to do with that thing being true, and you know that, this undermines your justification for believing it. For example, if I believe there’s a table on the basis of seeing it, but if I know that I’m hallucinating a table, so I’d see it even if it weren’t there, I should give up my belief that there’s a table on that basis.

Now consider several classes of knowledge:

1. It’s wrong to torture babies. You shouldn't do it! It seems like I know this. However, moral facts can’t push around atoms in our brains, so if our beliefs are generated entirely by our brains, we should give up that belief.

2. Married bachelors are impossible. Not only do they not exist in our world, they can’t exist even in principle. Something can’t be contradictory. But, of course, we’d have the same beliefs about married bachelors whether they were impossible or merely not real. So then unless we have some brute rational intuition about impossibilities, we should abandon our belief that contradictions are impossible—and think it’s decently likely we’ll find them if we ever enter a wormhole.

3. The sun will rise tomorrow. To justify this belief, we have to think that worlds that are like ours up until this point where the laws of physics continue working the same way are likelier than worlds where everything catastrophically implodes in one second. But we’d have the same beliefs in both of those worlds. Thus, if our beliefs come from the physical world, the reason we believe worlds where the sun rises tomorrow are likelier than worlds where it doesn’t has nothing to do with those worlds actually being likelier. So we should give up our belief that the sun will probably rise tomorrow.

Therefore, we have some non-physical faculty of intuition that allows us to grasp certain truths about the physical world, mathematics, modal facts, logical facts, and so on. This faculty is utterly bizarre and mysterious on atheism, while it makes perfect sense on theism. God wants us to know right from wrong, what’s possible and impossible, and to have knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow. It also gives evidence for libertarian free will—us being agents who can reason about the abstract realm in a non-physical way makes better sense under libertarianism than alternatives. But free will makes better sense under a theistic worldview, where will is one of the fundamental things.

(If you’d like to read more about this argument see these wonderful pieces—read them together because they collectively make the point I’m making. Each one individually is only half the puzzle).

Another piece of evidence for theism comes from the fact that the world has so many great goods. On atheism, while it’s possible that there would be the possibility of powerful relationships and immense knowledge, it’s far from guaranteed. Theism, in contrast, has a better explanation of this; if we are here to help each other, form valuable relationships, and learn and grow, it makes sense that we wouldn’t mostly pursue lives of frivolous pleasure. In contrast, under atheism, there’s no reason for such an expectation. Because God can give us pleasure much more easily, theism makes better sense of the fact that our lives are mostly geared towards growth and relationships, rather than senseless pleasure. In a theistic worldview, love is guaranteed; in an atheistic world, it is a surprise.

If one is going to count evil against theism—as well they should—they must count surprising goods as evidence for theism.

Next, the existence of souls provides a piece of strong evidence for theism. Souls are the non-physical thing that makes a person the same person through time. Even though I have a very different mind and body from my 4-year-old self, I’m the same person as my four-year-old self because I have the same soul.

Souls are quite intuitive. If some major change happens to my brain and body, it seems like there’s a fact of the matter about whether I survive. But if there aren’t souls, then it’s purely a matter of convention whether I survive—there’s no deeper fact that determines if I survive. After your mind and body change, there’s no fact of the mater about whether you survive, just as there’s no fact of the matter about whether a club, after undergoing great reformation, remains the same club (or if there is a fact of the matter, as the epistemicists claim, it’s a matter of linguistic convention rather than deep reality).

Souls are also needed if one believes that disembodied minds are possible. Suppose that there are two disembodied minds—minds without bodies—both having the experience of seeing a red wall. This seems possible. But if there aren’t souls, this is impossible. For there to be two different beings, they’d have to differ in some way. If things are the same in every way, they’re just the same thing.

But they don’t differ in any physical respect—they both are non-embodied. They also don’t differ in what they experience—they are having the same experience. So for this scenario to be possible, for them to be different, they have to differ in some non-physical properties that determines personal identity. But that’s what a soul is!

Souls make better sense under theism than under naturalism for two reasons. First, a model of reality under which an agent is the ultimate basis of everything makes better sense of agents being fundamental, just as it makes better sense of consciousness being fundamental. Second, on atheism, there’s no particular reason to expect souls to remain constant over time—perhaps we get a new soul every few minutes. It’s unclear what the simplest psychophysical laws are. Only theism makes sense of the intuition that our souls are consistent across time.

Theism also makes sense of why we’re not in a skeptical scenario. Under theism, God wouldn’t want us to be deceived, so he’d put us in a real world, where we can have lots of knowledge. In contrast, under atheism, there are plenty of ways that we could be in a skeptical scenario. I won’t list all the ways we could be in skeptical scenarios that aren’t terribly unlikely—though there’s quite a list—but just give a few examples.

First, we could be in a world where induction doesn’t work. Under most versions of atheism where there are Beth 2 people—which are, as I argued before, the most plausible versions of atheism—we’d be in a skeptical scenario. If, for example, every possible world exists, there are no more people in worlds where induction works than in worlds where induction doesn’t work! For every world where induction works, there are an infinite number of worlds where induction implodes in increasingly bizarre ways—the sun could be replaced by a penguin, or a thing of butter, or a trenchcoat. Most models of reality where atheism has enough people to be compatible with the anthropic argument—that’s the argument I gave earlier about your existence giving you evidence that infinity people exist, which gives you evidence for theism—undermine induction, as I’ve argued in my post on the anthropic argument.

Beyond that, the world could be non-inductive in other ways. Perhaps simpler worlds aren’t likelier—so the non-inductive worlds that outnumber the inductive worlds are actually more likely. Or maybe simpler worlds are only a bit more likely. Or maybe it’s impossible to assign probabilities to these sorts of metaphysical hypotheses, so we should be totally undecided about whether the world will end soon.

Second, we could be Boltzmann brains. A Boltzmann brain is a brain that briefly fluctuates into existence in the deep recesses of outer space, before freezing to death. Rather than living in a world, it’s a random chemical accident that just lasts a few seconds. Under theism, God wouldn’t make Boltzmann brains—being a Boltzmann brain is bad compared to living in a world, so God would put every soul in a world, rather than have them be short-lived Boltzmann brains. In contrast, under atheism Boltzmann brains are likely—had the world been, as would have been most probable, in a high entropy state, the random chaos would have produced mostly or exclusively Boltzmann brains. So under atheism, it’s decently likely that you’re a Boltzmann brains. If you notice yourself rapidly asphyxiating, as is almost guaranteed if you’re a Boltzmann brain, become an atheist. If not, be a theist.

I take it that you’re justified in thinking the external world is real, that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that your friends and family are real. Theism explains that better than atheism—God doesn’t want you to be massively deluded!

Well-evidenced miracle reports also fit better with a theistic worldview than an atheistic worldview. Atheists should expect apparent miracles to generally be obvious shams. Maybe sometimes we’ll be unable to identify how the trick happened, but we know that there was some trick. An atheist can theoretically believe in miracles, but it fits better in a theistic worldview.

There are some remarkably well-attested miracles. I’ve already discussed a few of these in some detail, here I’ll just discuss one more of them (much of my information about this comes from that linked episode).

The miracle I’m discussing is called the Miracle of Calanda, where one Miguel Pellicer allegedly regrew a limb. Pellicer’s leg was injured and the bit below the knee was amputated by surgeons Juan De Estanga and Diego Millaruelo (we have testimony from both of them that they cut off part of his leg). Miguel became a beggar because he could no longer farm.

In order to be a beggar, he had to apply for a begging license (if people applied for a begging license and were faking being disabled, they’d often be executed). Miguel got work as a lamplighter—he both begged and lit the lamp. Miguel often prayed to Mary and rubbed oil on his stump. After Pellicer prayed one night, he awoke with a new leg. Three days after the leg had regrown, Parish priests investigated the subject. Ten eyewitnesses said they’d seen Miguel without his leg and later with his leg.

Then, a more direct process was carried out by a secular panel involving about two dozen eyewitnesses. Over the course of a year, they examined the regrown limb and interviewed many eyewitnesses, including five eyewitnesses who said they’d witnessed the surgery that removed his leg, two of whom were the surgeons that performed the surgery.

There’s obviously no natural explanation of this regrown limb. So for this to be consistent with naturalism, either he’d have had to never have lost the leg or he’d have had to never regain the leg. Neither of these are probable.

Let’s first examine the possibility that Pellicer lost his leg and never regained it. This would require that a non-religious panel who examined him thoroughly over the course of the year wouldn’t have noticed that he had a leg! Somehow, they discussed the details of his leg at great length in the trial, without noticing it wasn’t really there.

Second of all, many eyewitnesses reported the leg being the same one as the one he’d lost. It had the same scar he’d gotten when he was younger. It’s hard to imagine how there’d be detailed descriptions of his leg during the trial if he didn’t have a leg.

Third, over the course of the trial, they dug up where the leg was supposed to be located and it was gone. This is expected if the leg was grafted back onto him by a Miracle, but utterly bizarre if the leg was amputated and never regrown.

Now, one might think he had a prosthetic leg. But had this been true, it would have been discovered by the thorough investigation. Many people described his leg being warm to the touch, and discussed feeling his leg. This wouldn’t be so if the leg had been a fake wooden leg.

The second possibility is that he faked missing a leg to get sympathy but never actually lost a leg. This explanation has various problems.

First of all, it’s very unlikely he’d have been able to trick the authorities into giving him a begging license. The authorities would often execute people who faked a begging license in Spain, so he’d have no incentive to do so. Furthermore, if he’d been faking, and his leg had just been bound up, they’d almost definitely have noticed that. One has to get a new begging license each year, so he’d have had to fool the authorities twice!

Second, he’d often sleep in a public space. But sleeping in a public space would be risky if Miguel was faking missing a leg. Binding up his leg all the time to sleep would be uncomfortable and quite costly, and he’d risk exposure when he slept.

Third, this requires thinking Pellicer fooled many people over the course of years. This is especially implausible given that around ten eyewitnesses reported feeling his stump with their hands after he took off the leg. It’s unlikely he’d show it off if he were faking.

Fourth, this doesn’t explain the reports from five different doctors who described either witnessing the amputation or carrying out the amputation. Other eyewitnesses reported seeing him in the hospital for five months (why would they have done that if no amputation had been carried out?), witnessing the severed leg, witnessing someone else carrying out the severed leg, witnessing the gangreinated leg not being successfully treated and so being cut off, and seeing Pellicer escorted out after the surgery. All of these were attested to under oath. All these different eyewitnesses would have had to be confused, conspiring, or mistaken, which is wildly implausible—what’s their incentive to do this?

The theist has a natural explanation of this phenomenon. The naturalist, in contrast, is left with a monstrously implausible and ad hoc theory than contradicts the evidence in half a dozen ways. There is simply no good natural explanation of what happened (perhaps why, as even Wikipedia notes, the skeptical debunkers main strategy has been flatly misstating the facts about what happened).

You can deny the healing on the grounds that miracles don’t happen. But that’s not an evidence-based position—it’s a philosophical assumption being used to bulldoze through the evidence.

The final piece of evidence for theism that I plan to mention here is widespread theistic belief and theistic experience. Many people have powerful experiences that they attribute to God. This is better explained by a theistic worldview—under naturalism, there’s no particular reason to expect people to feel like the creator of the universe is interacting with them. Theism gives us more reason to expect that—God wants a relationship with his creatures, so it’s not terribly surprising that many people would have religious experiences.

People often object that it’s surprising on theism that people have different religious experiences with different Gods—some with Krishna, some with Jesus, some with Allah. But generally people report somewhat consistent reports—rarely does God announce who he is during the experience, or proclaim that he is Allah and that Islam is true and Christianity false. It’s not surprising that God would want a relationship with many different religious people—not just Jews, Hindus, or Christians.

Even aside from the religious experience, the fact of widespread theistic belief is better explained by theism. Atheists often object to theism by raising the problem of hiddenness—that it’s surprising, if God exists, that he’s so hidden—that so few people know him. But if it’s evidence against theism that people seek God without finding him, it’s evidence for God that almost everyone finds God—that nearly everyone believes in God, that billions of people consider God to be the most important person in their life.

On atheism, it’s quite surprising that billions of people would start believing that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good being created the universe and loves you! But on theism, where there is such a being, it’s much likelier that belief in a being like that would be widespread.

Even aside from this, generally if almost everyone believes something, you should think it’s probably true. If you thought that Colorado was next to California, but you asked 100 people and they all said you were wrong, you should doubt that. Almost everything believed by the vast majority of people is true—beliefs like this include that there are more than 2 dogs, that dropping sharp objects on your foot hurts, and that objects that are dropped fall down. While people are sometimes wrong, the huge majority of widely held beliefs are trivial, and true.

There are lots of things believed by almost everyone but doubted by certain philosophers—the existence of tables, the wrongness of infant torture, the existence of the external world, and the fact that you’re the same person you were yesterday. While we should sometimes diverge from the beliefs of common people—of the hoi polloi—we should try not to abandon common sense too much. If almost all normal people believe something, even if many philosophers don’t, you should think it’s somewhat likely that it’s sort of self-evident—the type of thing you have to be highly educated to be silly enough to deny. God may be in that category.

My grandmother sure thinks so!

Section summary: theism best explains

—that you exist (out of the infinity people that could)

—that you’re not in a skeptical scenario.

—souls.

—knowledge of non-natural facts.

—powerful religious experiences.

—well attested miracles.

6 Alternatives

You said my smile
Was brighter than the sun
But I just have one question
Was I the only one?
I don’t think I was

“Was I The Only One,” Sammy Brue

The previous sections have argued that many things are nicely explained by theism. But perhaps there are non-theistic alternative explanations of these things. The two most promising alternatives are some kind of limited God and axiarchism.

Let’s begin with the limited God idea. On this picture, God would be limited in either power or goodness. Such a view, has, I think, many problems.

First, it’s much less simple than theism. Perfect being theism posits simply perfection—or alternatively, an unlimited mind. A being with specific, limited powers is much more complicated than a perfect being and has arbitrary limits—limits on its power or goodness.

Second, such a view can’t explain the anthropic data. While theism naturally predicts every possible person existing, a limited God would likely not be powerful enough to make every possible person. To be powerful enough to make every possible person, a being has to be pretty damn powerful—but once you think a god is that powerful, why not go all the way?

Third, this is a worse explanation of psychophysical harmony. Perfect being theism explains the pairing between God’s mind and the world in terms of his perfection—the best kind of being’s will is obeyed by reality—while a limited being has no similar explanation. As a result, it lacks any plausible explanation of psychophysical harmony which massively neuters its probability. One of the best arguments for God is an argument against such a view.

Fourth, this view has an analogous problem to naturalism. A creature is a type of thing. But a picture on which there’s a limited God must posit that the creature exists and has certain powers that apply to the world. It must be taken as brute that it has powers, the powers are able to produce interesting things, and it has the power to interact with other things that exist. Most conceivable gods wouldn’t produce anything interesting.

Fifth, this cannot explain why there’s something rather than nothing. The contingency argument cannot be used to support such a being.

Another significant alternative to perfect being theism is axiarchism—according to which there’s some force that makes reality maximally good. But this view is problematic.

First of all, such a view probably would involve the existence of God. It’s good if God exists, so under axiarchism, we’d expect God to exist.

Second, such a view is much less simple than perfect being theism. It can’t do to state that all good things exist, because good things are incompatible (it’s good for me to be in California and it’s good for me to be in Florida, but I can’t be both at the same time). You can try to patch this by saying that fundamental reality is the best collection of things, but this is less simple and there isn’t a single best collection of things. There are many ways reality could be that are as good as the best possible world—if a random leaf turned orange and no one saw it, that wouldn’t make the world worse. So how does the axiarchist world “decide” whether to make that leaf turn orange. This problem doesn’t arise for God because God has only the minimum features needed for maximal goodness, which includes a maximally good will. There are also many other routes towards establishing the simplicity of God.

Third, this view doesn’t explain religious experience well or widespread theistic belief. Religious experiences make sense if a creator is trying to connect with us, but make less sense if there’s no creator (you could object that they’re predicted because they’re good, but most good things don’t happen).

Fourth—and I haven’t time to go into detail—the most promising theodicy doesn’t work for axiarchism. The axiarchist, therefore, has a worse explanation of evil.

Fifth, axiarchism is inherently less plausible. Agents act for reasons, so it makes sense that an agent would pursue the good. In contrast, it’s much stranger, more mysterious, and less elegant that some generic force would pursue the good. To evaluate different reasons, it seems one has to be an agent.

Sixth, axiarchism lacks an ability to accommodate the contingency argument! There’s no explanation of why this good force would exist rather than nothing, unlike, perhaps, theism.

7 Conclusion

Now, these points of data make a beautiful line
And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time
So I'm glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive

—Still alive

At the beginning, I suggested a parallel between creationism and atheism. Becuase both have a fundamental misconception about the way their subject operates, they have poor explanations of particular things. There are both single phenomena that almost single-handedly decimate the theory, and wide ranges of phenomena, none of which are decisive, but which collectively make the theory untenable.

In the case of atheism, I think that psychophysical harmony, fine-tuning, and the anthropic argument are pretty decisive standalone arguments. The rest of the considerations range from just a bit of evidence to a powerful consideration that majorly raises the probability of theism.

Theism isn’t supported just from explaining one or two things, but from being the best explanation of a range of phenomena. Just as nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution, and nothing in the Torah makes sense except in light of the documentary hypothesis, nothing in the world makes sense except in the light of God.

This is not to say that there are no mysteries in the theistic worldview. Evil remains a puzzle, as does much of theistic metaphysics, just as the origin of life remains a puzzle for the evolutionist. But it makes vastly better sense of the world as a whole, on almost every level.

I’ve elsewhere elaborated on how good of news it is if theism is true. It means every wrong will be righted, every tear will be wiped away, everything sad will become untrue. C.S. Lewis’s powerful ending of the Narnia series is apt here, as a description of what our ultimate fate is if theism is true:

“The dream is ended: this is the morning."

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Theism is a beautiful and wonderful worldview—the kind of thing worth hoping for. A theistic worldview is incalculable better than an atheistic one. Fortunately, as I hope to have shown, it’s not just beautiful, not just a nice story, but is true.