The Argument From Weird Metaphysics Against Theism

Theism requires making weird metaphysical assumptions

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road…

—Matthew 7:13-14

I think one thing that makes me quite hesitant to fully embrace theism—despite the mountain of evidence supporting it—is that it requires lots of controversial philosophical assumptions. There are many different things that one must think are coherent and possible to be a theist, yet which are not clearly so. Many of these are things that non-theists should not be antecedently inclined to accept. Here, I’ll list 8 or so of these.

1. Nowhere near the most convincing, but theism requires that one thinks disembodied minds are possible. I think they are, but a physicalist should probably reject this, and maybe even a property dualist should. So this fact alone should be enough to cut one’s confidence in theism a bit.

2. For theism to be simple, there must be such a thing as a greatest possible being. But I’m not confident that there is such a thing—perhaps a greatest being is like a biggest number. If one can always do more good—controversial in its own right—then for each being that could exist there is one that could do more good. I’ve argued with Dustin about this before, and while I’m less sure about the argument than I used to be, it still seems plausible. Dustin has this idea that there’s some property of inherent moral goodness, that is a simple property and requires that one either does a lot of good if there’s no limit to how much good they can do or does as much good as they can do. But I’m not sure that there is such a simple property—it seems sort of gerrymandered—and I’m not sure why the simple ways of arriving at theism would mean that it has this property. It seems like a being who is inclined to do more good in similar circumstances is more perfect. Furthermore, the idea that they must do at least a lot of good is odd. How much? Why that amount? It seems like a strange and arbitrary property. I’m pretty inclined to a broadly scalar utilitarian account of morality, according to which some states of affairs are just better than others, and one has more reason to bring about those, and all other moral facts reduce to those facts and natural facts.

3. If you’re a Christian, in particular, you have to believe in the trinity. Now, this is not a topic I’ve studied much, but if Christianity commits you to the idea it is intelligible, that’s a cost to the theory.

4. It seems like a requirement of consciousness is that one is a soul. But is God a soul? Souls are roughly further facts about who is having some experience over and above what’s being experienced. But if God has a soul, then there could be another being with the same experiences and powers as God that is a different person, just as there could have been a different person with the same physical and psychological traits as me that had been born. That seems weird.

5. While I think moral realism is true, I’m not 100% sure that’s right (only around 90%). But if anti-realism is true, there can’t be God, because God’s properties require perfect goodness. Thus, ironically, contrary to the claims of defenders of the moral argument, if there can’t be morality apart from God, then God doesn’t exist.

6. Is existing outside of time coherent? I don’t know. It’s hard for me to even get my head around that. Yet God is supposed to be timeless at least sans creation. So how does that work? Note, I don’t think I have a knockdown objection here: I merely claim that it’s not especially obvious that existing absent time is coherent, which is a requirement for theism to be true.

7. Is perfection a simple property? I’m not sure. Seems like probably not. Maybe perfection is a gerrymandered property—sort of like the property of being in Mexico or being a turtle. But if the way to establish theism’s simplicity is by saying it just follows from perfection, then perfection has to be simple and fundamental. And I don’t know that it is.

8. Can there be actual infinites? If not, then I think theism is probably false, for then God has to just pick a random number of people to bring about, which seems arbitrary. It seems weird that God has to just pick a number of people to create, pick an arbitrary stopping point in terms of the good he does, for he can always do more.

I’m not super sold on some of these. The ones that really trouble me are 2, 4, 6, and 7—the others are views I find pretty improbable. Yet there are enough to cut the odds of theism a bit.

On the other hand, as I described in my last article, I’m pretty sympathetic to something Swinburne said. In physics, we posit weird and simple properties to explain the world—e.g. things sort of like particles and sort of like fields. Maybe we just have to live with the weirdness of God—accept, like those who supposed time couldn’t bend prior to Einstein, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.